


bottles breaking

by tinymark (lumoon33)



Series: bad apple [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Blood and Gore, Blow Jobs, Body Horror, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends With Benefits, Frottage, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Summer Fling, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, explicit imagery, for imagery, grey characters, tho are they even friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:02:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29288772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumoon33/pseuds/tinymark
Summary: Donghyuck wants to keep Mark like this. He wants to pin him to the bathroom floor with his body and pierce needle and thread through the pads of his fingers, sew him to the tiles so he will stay waiting for Donghyuck forever. He wants to sew Mark to the bathroom floor just to unravel his stitches every night Donghyuck decides to show up, lick the wounds closed with his tongue afterward, just to do it all over again.(or: donghyuck has really bad coping mechanisms and mark is very pretty)
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Series: bad apple [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2150952
Comments: 74
Kudos: 189





	bottles breaking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haemies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haemies/gifts).



> please read the tags!!!!! metions of body horror, blood and gore!!!! it's only for imagery, but be careful and don't read if it can trigger you/make you uncomfortable!!!
> 
> this is part of the same universe as my fic "falling to the bathroom floor", but from donghyuck's fucked up pov. it's different from what i've written before and kinda experimental but i hope you guys like it!! im sorry for any mistakes you can find bc (as usual) my editing process was super half-assed fsdgfd
> 
> for v ❤

**Don’t make the first move.**

Lee Donghyuck promised six things to himself a long time ago: don't make the first move, don't fuck someone twice, never keep a _see you later,_ don't stay the night, don't crawl for anybody, never let anyone inside.

“There are faces that could make you break every single one of your little rules,” Jaemin tells him every time they talk about it, a droopy lopsided smile on his pretty mouth 'cause they never see each other sober enough to grin straight.

They say there are faces worth waging war for. In his 20 years of life, Donghyuck has never come across one before. If he has, then he had been too prideful to admit it at the time.

See, Donghyuck has pride as big as the length of both of his arms stretched wide. He has learned to fold it end over end, shrink it enough to force it in between his ribs, neatly tucked under his lungs, where no one can get to it unless they decide to sneak inside. It's not as if he will ever let anyone in, anyway. The space between his chin and belly button is the safest place he knows.

So far, Donghyuck has never met anyone with power great enough to scratch his pride. He never bows his head for anyone, he likes other people dragging their knees across the dirty floor to get his attention while he stays perched on the bar of Jaemin's kitchen, waiting patiently as he roams blown-out eyes across the house in search of his next victim.

A single glance, a crooked lip, one wink. Usually, that's all it takes to have someone snapping in half for him, defenseless and willing to be sucked empty.

Some people say there are faces worth waging war for. Tonight, it is the first time Donghyuck comes across one: pitch-black hair, arched eyebrows, jaw so sharp that Donghyuck can feel the sting of its bite on his fingertips even from across the room. Pale, pretty boy with big, round eyes that are looking everywhere but at Donghyuck.

"Mark Lee," Jaemin tells him, leaning across the sticky kitchen bar counter to press the name wetly to the shell of Donghyuck's ear. "Childhood friend, studying abroad. He came back for the summer!"

Donghyuck hums in approval around the mouth of his bottle of beer, his forearm sliding along the dirty surface of the bar to push himself taller so he can stare at the unfamiliar guy more clearly.

Mark Lee has a face Donghyuck would probably punch for, he has always had a thing for bloody knuckles and scraped skin, after all. He has always liked innocent-looking boys, sweaty pale skin flushed alcohol-pink down to their chests. And Mark’s got wet cheekbones, glistening cherry-red under the warm light of the living room as if he has been crying. He’s got slim cheeks that go hollow when he smiles, curving in just right to make Donghyuck want to press his closed fist there. When he laughs at whatever the guy next to him is saying, Mark scrunches up his nose and he throws his head back, exposing the line of his throat like an invitation to the entire room, an offering for the fastest contender to carve their name on the smooth, milky canvas. If there's something Donghyuck knows how to do, that is to bruise.

Mark sways to the loud music like someone who would know how to dance if there wasn’t more alcohol than blood in their veins. He’s dressed in such plain clothes, he would have never stood out to a sober Donghyuck. But he's got slender fingers wrapped firmly around a red plastic cup, and Donghyuck can't stop wondering how they would feel wrapped around something else, something delicate, something deathly.

Mark Lee has pink lips that shine a tad brighter with each sip he takes from his cup, curled upward at some eyes that aren't Donghyuck's.

Some mouths are worth killing for, and Donghyuck likes shiny things and bloody hands. Above anything else, he likes fights he knows he can win, so he sets his drink down on the counter and pushes himself off the bar to cross the room in four long strides.

"Hey," he shoves his way right in front of Mark, forces himself directly into his line of vision as he slides in between Mark and the faceless guy he was just talking to. "Mark Lee, right?"

The other guy huffs behind them, but Donghyuck pushes him back and away with his shoulder. Mark's big round eyes go even rounder when he looks at Donghyuck, blinking rapidly as if he can’t look at anything else all of a sudden.

Mark is already so drunk, Donghyuck can tell in the way his mouth falls open easily, jaw slack as his tongue pushes past his white teeth, lips shimmering with a mix of alcohol and spit. Donghyuck wants to lean in and close his teeth around the smooth flesh of Mark’s mouth, wants to tug at the skin until it rips apart under his tongue just enough so Mark’s lips will scream his name for a week.

"Do I know you?" Mark asks with slurred words, leaning forward dangerously close, near enough that Donghyuck can inhale his drunken breath.

Donghyuck smirks at him, slow and lazy, and shudders when Mark's eyes follow the seams of his mouth upward, getting nearer like an enchanted man.

"You know me now," Donghyuck tells him, giggling at the end when Mark's eyes snap to his face abruptly, still blinking rapidly. "I'm Donghyuck."

There is not a single Saturday Donghyuck isn't drunk himself, the kind of intoxication that makes his limbs heavy and causes each movement to seem painfully sluggish. It feels like slow motion when he lifts his free hand to curl sticky fingers around the back of Mark’s neck, and Mark only leans closer one more time, almost knocking their noses together, still looking at Donghyuck’s face as if he were the product of his imagination.

“Wanna have some fun out of here?” Donghyuck whispers, tilting his head up to bump the tip of his nose against Mark’s.

Mark nods at him as rapidly as he blinks, his mouth still half-open in awe. Donghyuck runs his thumb down the side of Mark’s neck, pressing in hard enough for his nail to leave an angry-red trail at its wake. He swears Mark’s heart jumps in slow motion under his pad, his tongue sliding out of his mouth as if he’s desperate to find out what Donghyuck tastes like, staring with wide, wide eyes as if he can’t believe his luck.

It’s not that Donghyuck needs validation, it’s not that he likes reassurance, but who doesn’t enjoy having their ego stroked? When he digs his fingers into Mark’s nape like a claw, Mark whimpers at the touch in a high-pitched voice and, once Donghyuck pushes him forward, he stumbles towards the stairs with no complaints.

On their way up, Mark looks over his shoulder every half a second to make sure Donghyuck is still there, to make sure he didn’t make him up. Donghyuck beams at him every single time, dissolving into light drunken giggles when Mark trips over his feet. He’s so painfully eager, so obviously _soft_. By the end of the night, Donghyuck will make Mark feel as if he himself was made up.

“Why are you wearing shoes?” that is the first thing Mark says when Donghyuck kicks the bathroom door closed with his heel, locking out the loud sound of the loud music still playing downstairs.

“I’m ‘bout to fuck you ‘nd that’s what you focus on?” Donghyuck laughs at him, walking closer on his heavy feet, all the alcohol he’s drowned in the past two hours pooling around his ankles.

The red cup in Mark’s hand is almost empty, curved inward under the strength of his long, pale fingers. He’s gripping onto his paper glass like his life depends on it, but his hold goes almost slack when Donghyuck curls his own fingers around it. Donghyuck tugs the cup out of Mark’s hand and chugs down the liquid inside of it in one single motion. Mark’s big, round eyes stay focused on him, shining feverish-white under the lightbulb of the bathroom, his tongue sliding from between his teeth to lick at his lower lip as if he’s thirsty for something entirely different, for something solid and rotten.

“But we’re inside,” Mark says dumbly, his gaze falling on Donghyuck’s now wet mouth when his seams curl upward in a smirk.

“You have shit taste,” Donghyuck smacks his lips together at the sour taste of the drink. He throws the cup to the floor and the remnants of the sticky alcohol spot Mark’s baby blue socks dirty with yellowish dots. “I don’t wanna step on anythin’ nasty,” Donghyuck says, looking down at Mark’s feet before sliding his eyes up his body lazily.

He reaches out as soon as his gaze meets the line of Mark’s jaw, hands gripping at the jutted-out bones of Mark’s hips to pull him closer. Mark moves with him so easily, he stumbles forward on unsteady, drunken legs, the tips of his socked feet stepping on Donghyuck’s shoes almost eagerly as he falls against Donghyuck’s chest.

“You’re so fuckin’ clumsy,” Donghyuck giggles, tilting his head to the side so Mark can drag the tip of his nose along the side of his throat. “Or are you just eager when you’re drunk?”

“Jaemin lets you keep your shoes on inside?” Mark asks against Donghyuck’s neck. He starts peppering kisses on the skin, his sticky lips smacking against the heated flesh way too softly for Donghyuck’s liking. He’s almost careful about it, moving slowly from the base of Donghyuck’s throat to the sensitive spot behind his ear. 

All Donghyuck wants to do is get his hands inside of Mark and claw at his bones hard enough to force him to show his teeth, so he sinks nails into the flesh of Mark’s hips and hopes to lift skin.

“I don't need anyone to _let me_ do anythin’” Donghyuck says, his words broken by a giggle when Mark’s mouth falls open against his neck.

Donghyuck tugs at Mark’s shirt enough to slip his hands underneath, fingers pressing harshly over the fresh dents his nails just left a few seconds ago. Mark moans brokenly against him, his voice almost gone when he says “Cocky, aren’t you?”

Then, there are hands under Donghyuck’s shirt, gentle fingers that slide between the fabric and the skin far more slowly than he would like. Mark presses his sticky palms flat against Donghyuck’s lower back, the tips of his fingers dipping under the waistband of Donghyuck’s jeans only to rest there as his mouth reaches Donghyuck’s ear lobe.

“Greedy, aren’t you?” Donghyuck asks back, laughing lightly because alcohol turns him over-sensitive, and every single one of Mark’s touches feels tickle-like. “At least grope me properly, Mark Lee.” 

The soft, fleeting kisses don’t stop, though, even if Mark’s hands keep sliding lower and lower under Donghyuck’s pants. He’s touching him as if he’s someone fragil, as if he might come undone under Mark’s pads like a sandcastle if he digs hard enough in the wrong places. What Mark doesn’t know is that all of Donghyuck’s places are wrong, and none of them are soft, and he likes it that way.

So impatience pinches at Donghyuck’s gut and drives him to take his hand out of Mark’s shirt just to slip it through his deep-black hair, his fingers fisting the gelled strands so he can tug at it, harsh and unapologetic. Mark doesn’t complain about the pain, he only throws his head back diligently and looks at Donghyuck with hooded eyes and flushed cheeks. His spit-stained mouth falls open, the tip of his tongue resting over his lower lip as if he’s waiting for Donghyuck to drop something there.

There are so many things Donghyuck wants to do to him. He wants to pick up the cup from the floor and force the remnants of the drink down Mark’s throat. He wants to spit into Mark’s mouth and bite the tip of his tongue off. He wants to unbuckle his own jeans and shove his dick between Mark’s lips as far as he can go. Above all that, Donghyuck wants to grip at Mark’s perfectly white teeth with his fingertips—the way you touch something delicate, something tacky—and push and push and push until Mark’s jaw clicks out of place, wide enough for Donghyuck to peek inside and steal the important parts.

Instead, he leans forward and shoves his tongue into Mark’s mouth, pressing hard until he can feel Mark’s teeth almost indenting his own lips. And Donghyuck knows Mark would kiss slowly if he could—gentle tongue and closed eyes because blushy pretty boys don’t know how to bite—but Donghyuck doesn’t give him the chance to. He chews at Mark’s bottom lip until the ashy taste of smoke is replaced by the metallic taste of a bruise, and he tugs and tugs and tugs until Mark’s hands tighten on his ass.

“You smoked without me?” Donghyuck asks when he pulls back, nuzzling Mark’s nose with his own at the same time he runs his nails down Mark’s nape.

“I didn’t even know you existed,” Mark complains, _whines_ , his breath getting caught in an unexpected whimper when Donghyuck cups him through his jeans with an iron grip.

Donghyuck blinks at him slowly, pursing his lips as his fingers start to work Mark’s zipper undone. “That sounds like a you problem.”

“Don’t pout,” Mark frowns at him, going a bit cross-eyed as he stares down at Donghyuck’s mouth. “Makes you seem cute.”

That makes Donghyuck giggle one more time. He pulls Mark’s jeans and underwear down his thighs with one sharp tug, yanking him even closer to mumble against his jaw, “I’m always cute.”

Mark Lee’s got a jaw so sharp that you can feel the sting of it with just a single look at it, but, when Donghyuck smiles against it, the skin is just as soft as the rest of him.

Donghyuck pushes his clothed thigh against Mark’s half-hard dick, the denim rubbing directly and sharply over the most sensitive part of him. The action has Mark pushing his head back, offering a free ticket to his neck and jaw, and Donghyuck’s never been one to reject gifts presented to him in silver plates.

When he brings his mouth to Mark’s chin, he bites at the skin aiming to gash. Donghyuck has had experience with soft things before, they cut deeper than ragged edges because you’re never expecting the stab. So he sinks his teeth into Mark’s chin until he’s sure his mouth will stay imprinted there for days, and then he does the same to the rest of his neck. That’s the way it goes, you have to claim soft things before they attempt to smooth you over. And Mark moans into it and grows harder against Donghyuck’s thigh as if he’s desperate to be eaten alive.

“Are you always this desperate?” Donghyuck gasps, pressing both of his hands to Mark’s wide shoulders just to push him off of him with a sharp shove. “Or ‘s it jus’ the alcohol?”

The look on Mark’s face gives away that he’s far too drunk to even remember what he acts like when he’s sober, but he blushes down to his now bruised up neck anyway, as if his sober self is screaming embarrassed inside of him. Donghyuck wants to scratch at the skin of Mark’s temples until it starts to peel off, just so he can tug at it and unstick it from the rest of him, discover what’s underneath and sink his teeth there too.

“Just c’mere,” Mark almost whines, standing there with his pants and underwear down to his knees, making grabby hands at Donghyuck to bring him closer again.

Donghyuck scoffs softly, his mouth going dry at the sight of a boy so ready to be tarnished. “’m gonna break you in two, Mark Lee,” he laughs lightly, coming closer just to turn Mark around and force him to bend in half, forearms resting over the edge of the bathtub. “Want me to break you? You seem pretty but you’re not. You’re jus’ nasty, aren’t you?”

And Mark doesn’t even deny it. He only pushes his arms harder against the uncomfortable bite of the bathtub and groans out loud when Donghyuck presses a dry finger against his entrance, pushing back against it as if his entire body is screaming in agreement.

The muffled sound of the music disappears completely when Donghyuck finally fucks Mark, hard and clumsy, still fully dressed besides their pants and underwear pooling around their knees. It always feels like this when he’s drunk off his ass, the slap of skin against skin louder than anything else but the deep punch of the bassline, pounding on Donghyuck’s temples with every thurst of his hips.

It’s fast and messy, Donghyuck’s hands tangling into Mark’s shirt and stretching the material, his mouth mapping out the flushed skin of Mark’s neck, turning it pretty purple to match the rest of him. And Mark doesn’t run away, he curls his fingers into the edge of the bathtub until his nails threaten to snap off, and he arches his back against Donghyuck’s chest as if he wants their ribs to flush together.

Donghyuck doesn’t want to blend into Mark’s body, he wants to scrape him up inside and scratch him for a lifetime.

The image of his own ribs tearing through both of their skins and slotting between Mark’s pops up behind Donghyuck’s eyelids unannounced. Alcohol always messes with his head like this, gets him twisted in the brain and turned on to the point that is pleasantly painful. The sole thought has him clawing at the fabric of Mark’s shirt, hands spread over his hard belly as he pushes Mark up and against him, his back pressed to Donghyuck’s chest as he keeps pounding into him, harsher and clumsier with each note of the bass playing outside.

It doesn’t even register in Donghyuck’s mind when Mark comes. He’s too lost in his own pleasure as he sinks nails and teeth in pale skin, relentlessly sliding in and out of the warm tight grip of Mark’s body until his legs start to shake with the force of his own pleasure.

Selfish as he is proud, Donghyuck takes and takes and takes until he’s empty and soft inside of Mark, his burning cheek resting against the spit-slick flesh of Mark’s nape.

“Holy shit,” Mark croaks after a few seconds of silence where the pounding of Donghyuck’s heart slows down enough for his ears to catch the music again.

Mark is shaking against Donghyuck, but it’s not out of fear or pleasure. He’s laughing, his head lolling back until it slumps against Donghyuck’s shoulder, eyes unfocused but wide open under the harsh light of the lightbulb.

“Holy shit,” he repeats, his words cracked open by a breathless giggle.

That has Donghyuck snapping out of it. He slides out of Mark and pushes him away, walking backward in unsteady feet as he rolls the condom off of himself at the same time.

“What you laughin’ at, weirdo?” he asks, throwing the rubber in the general direction of the trashcan, but too wasted and lightheaded to even care if it makes it into the bin.

Mark only shrugs as he turns around, already tucked in, but with traces of cum all over his shirt and down the front of his pants. He looks out of it, blown-up eyes and blood-red lips, his shirt stretched around his collarbones and displaying a messy canvas of blooming purples and dirty yellows. He’s smiling, though, gently touching at his neck with those long, slim fingers. Donghyuck’s ravished him, and he still has the guts to be gentle about it.

“D’you always come untouched?” Donghyuck asks him, taking a slow step closer to Mark once his jeans are zipped up again. He stops to stand right in front of Mark, close enough to feel his breath. “Or was it a me thing?”

It’s kind of impressive, the way Mark holds his ground when Donghyuck traces a finger down the line of his neck, his index finger digging mercilessly into one of the fresh bruises there. Donghyuck knows it must hurt, but Mark only blinks at him rapidly, as if he still can’t believe he didn’t make Donghyuck up after all, even if he’s got traces of his existence all over his body.

“Let’s do this again sometime and you might get your answer,” Mark raises his chin almost defiantly, and the motion only makes the gathered tears in the corners of his eyes twinkle under the white lightbulb. Still, he doesn’t run away, standing tall and almost proud in a weird alcohol-induced attempt at bravery.

But, as harsh and dirty Donghyuck’s mind can get, he has never liked chains and sticky things. He rolls his eyes with a scoff, walking out of Mark’s personal space fast as the blink of an eye.

“Wait,” Mark croaks out. He doesn’t attempt to grab at Donghyuck, though. He only flops down on the floor with clumsy limbs, as if he’s too high to stand straight. “Will I see you again?”

Donghyuck cocks his head to the side, tongue stuck into his own cheek as he allows his eyes to roam over Mark’s disheveled form one last time. He seems on the verge of ripping, one more cut of Donghyuck’s nails and he might spill crimson all over the white floor. “Probably.”

Arched eyebrows and round, hopeful eyes, that’s the reaction Donghyuck gets out of his answer. Mark kneads at his own thighs with needy hands and smiles with cotton edges ‘cause pretty innocent boys never know when to run. “Will I have you again?”

“You’ve never had me,” Donghyuck points out, walking backward until his back knocks against the closed door.

Mark scrunches up his nose like a frustrated little kid, and Donghyuck wonders what he’d say if Mark knew he wants to bite it off. “You know what I mean.”

“It’s jus’ a hook-up, man. I don’t do repeats, don’t ruin my fun,” Donghyuck tells him, turning around to wrap his fingers around the doorknob, “You can dream ‘bout it, though.” When he finally pulls the door open, the loud music breaks into the small room as if he’s just about to step into a battlefield. “Jerk off to me if you wanna, I don’t mind,” he says with one last smirk over his shoulder.

Mark nods as if he’s actually going to do it, sweaty and lovely and oh-so-out of his mind. Donghyuck is only half a second away from turning around to suck his neck dry, but he slams the door firmly on his way out.

It’s just one more pretty corpse in his stuffed closet, anyway.

**Don’t fuck someone twice.** ****

“You’re like the reaper, man,” Jaemin says the next Saturday, two in the morning and grinning like a madman, high on something stronger than alcohol.

Donghyuck crooks an eyebrow at him, squinting through his heavy eyelids to try to focus his blurry vision on Jaemin’s delirious smile. “What you talkin’ about?” he asks as smoke floods out of his mouth. He leans closer in the small space of the couch to pass the joint from his fingers to Jaemin’s mouth, sticking it right in between Jaemin’s flash-white teeth.

“Mark Lee, dude,” Jaemin laughs, the name slurred around the blunt. “My childhood friend, remember him?”

It would be considered a lie if Donghyuck said he remembered that name until it came out of Jaemin's lips, but he can recall innocent arched eyebrows and child-like grabby hands. He rarely remembers faces he sees when he’s drunk, but it’s hard to forget a mouth like that, and skin so pale that it bloomed purple under the lightest scratch.

He hums, lifting both of his eyebrows at Jaemin as he presses their bodies closer. “What ‘bout him?” he asks in a hushed scream into Jaemin’s cheek, close only so he won’t lose any word to the loud music.

“Found him passed out on my bathroom floor Sunday morning,” Jaemin tells him, leaning his head against Donghyuck’s and whispering in the small, charged space between them as if they are sharing secrets. “Not the first time I’ve walked in on one of your hook-ups the morning after but… What a sight, man.”

Donghyuck can’t help the giggle that bubbles up his chest at the memory of Mark’s spit-slicked neck, tangled deep-black hair, and stretched-out clothes. He hiccups into Jaemin’s face, tilts his head back a little to press words against the shell of his ear. “Should’ve cut him open.”

“Looked like you did, god,” Jaemin snickers, high-pitched and light as he spits the last word out.

But god is not the term Donghyuck would use to describe himself. He’s got the devil complex—he’s aware he is self-centered and stained—he knows not everyone is out to get him or out to get in his pants, but he’ll keep acting like it as long as it keeps people half-away, only close enough to make him come. He’s had his hands tied up once before, angry-red wrists and an exsanguinated heart, and he vowed to himself to never be that person again.

Yeah, Donghyuck’s got the devil complex. He gets hard to the idea of possessing bodies just to scatter them around, he gets off to ruined skin. He stands high and mighty, and walks out of crime scenes wearing his dirty reaper shoes because he knows they will leave footprints behind.

He has dreamt about it before, slashing someone open just to leave them to bleed out sticky feelings on white bathroom tiles while they dream of him until they pass out, yearning for someone they will never have. He has never walked in on something like that until now, though, when he stumbles up the stairs on heavy feet and pulls the bathroom door open to come face to face with Mark Lee.

“The hell are you doin’ here?” Donghyuck asks after he closes the door with his heel. He doesn’t look at Mark in the face, he only steps over his sprawled legs to get to the sink.

Water splashes harshly against the sink when Donghyuck pushes the faucet open as far as it can go, but Mark’s voice still sneaks its way between the rumble of the water and the muffled music to climb into Donghyuck’s ear. “I was waiting for you,” he talks slow and quiet, dragging each letter as if he’s stuck somewhere between sleep and drunkenness.

Donghyuck leans down to fit his lips around the stream of the water, chugging just enough liquid to fill his cheeks. He rinses his mouth fast and harsh, unsuccessfully trying to get rid of the stale taste of the drink he was just sharing with Jaemin. He spits everything out after a few seconds, then he turns to Mark to spit out a reply. “Didn’t come ‘ere for you.”

Mark doesn’t choose to reply with anger. He doesn’t even try to look offended by Donghyuck’s indifference, so soft down to his bones that he can’t even fake it. Instead, a pout makes its way to his lips, that pretty mouth of his pursed into a disappointed grimace, almost sad, and incredibly pathetic. He doesn’t even blush in embarrassment, he allows failure to take all over his features, shaping him small and vulnerable against the bathtub as he shrugs his shoulders like a child. He’s bleeding feelings all over the dirty white floor, too naive to learn how to hide them, so sweet that the sight of him is giving Donghyuck toothache.

“Still, I was hoping to see you again,” Mark mumbles, squirming as he rummages in the pockets of his tight jeans.

It takes him a while, but he ends up fishing out a match and a bent joint, his pout morphing into a small proud smile. Oh, how Donghyuck wants to make him bleed in a completely different way, viscous and bright red.

“Told you it was a one-time thing,” Donghyuck taps the faucet closed and leans his back against the sink, his hands curled around the ceramic. He watches with curious eyes as Mark pushes himself to his feet with brusque movements. “One time got you all desperate?”

Mark’s droopy smile blooms into a full glassy grin, his swollen eyelids falling heavily over his twinkling eyes as he approaches Donghyuck in a short, waddly step.

At first, Mark doesn’t reply. He moves close enough to press his socked toes to the tip of Donghyuck’s worn-out trainers, slouching into himself as he struggles to get the match going. Donghyuck tightens his grip on the edge of the sink, his nails trying to dig creases into the ceramic as his eyes slide over the fainted smudges on Mark’s neck, almost-gone light-brown bruises in the shape of Donghyuck’s teeth.

“Yeah,” Mark finally says when he manages to get a flame out of the match. He straightens his back, bringing the lit-up blunt to Donghyuck’s mouth as his face parts into a hollow-cheeked smile. “Want a drag? I waited for you this time.”

Donghyuck pushes his tongue into his cheek and stares at the lit-up joint, watches it dissolve under the fire faster than the speed of time, scattering grey specks of dust all over Mark’s yellowish socks and Jaemin’s too bright tiles.

He kind of wants Mark’s skin to come undone under his fingertips just like that, Donghyuck thinks as he traps the joint between his index and middle fingers. He wants to close his fist and harden his hand, ready to punch. He wants to place white knuckles against the hollow of Mark’s cheek and watch as his pretty-pink mouth turns corpse-grey, just so Donghyuck can bite it red again, bite it back to life just to tear it apart.

With his eyes focused on Mark’s impossibly wide, incredibly hopeful, foolish grin, Donghyuck takes a slow drag of the joint. When he blows the smoke right into Mark’s face, Mark doesn’t even blink, he only smiles wider.

“Are you a hopeless romantic everyday?” Donghyuck asks as smoke keeps slipping between his teeth. He brings his hand to Mark’s shoulder, taps the joint with his thumb, and more ash falls down to stain Mark’s blue plaid shirt dirty-grey. “Or’s that only when you drink?”

“You always ask these questions about me,” Mark replies, seemingly brave enough to use words like ‘always’ when they’ve known each other for half a second. That’s the thing about naive pretty boys, they mistake bravery with stupidity, and walk into places they might never be able to escape from. Mark is teetering a dangerous line now, his slim, always gentle fingers coming up to cradle Donghyuck’s face, swiping away the droplets of water still dribbling down his chin. “Are you sure you aren’t interested?”

Donghyuck lets out a burst of laughter in a mix of disbelief and over-sensitivity, Mark’s fingertips tickling at his jaw light enough to make him squirm. “What was your name again?” Donghyuck asks and he swats Mark’s hands away with fast movement of his arm.

Mark, of course, _pouts_ at him. It’s like he doesn’t even realize how dangerous it is, displaying his hurt all over his face so unabashedly to someone he doesn’t even know, someone he shouldn’t ever trust.

“I dreamt, you know?” he mumbles, still speaking slowly as if the alcohol in his veins is draining the words out of him. He takes the joint out of Donghyuck’s hand and brings it to his own lips, taking a deep drag before he says: “Just like you told me to. I did, like, dream about you.”

The words take a while to register in Donghyuck’s brain, and he almost groans out loud when it finally hits him. He stays still for a second, waiting for Mark to backtrack, to laugh it off, to blame it on the alcohol. This lack of filter and self-preservation he wears around so proudly must be due to the alcohol and the weed, but everything underneath has to be true, because Mark only blinks at him with those round, red-rimmed eyes, head tilting to the side as he waits.

“‘m gonna cut you open, Mark Lee,” Donghyuck pushes himself off the sink to shove his body against Mark’s, one of his hands curling around Mark’s to force him to drop the joint to the floor.

“So you do know my name,” Mark laughs, his lips curling upward into a smile that looks pitifully genuine.

“Gon’ cut you open,” Donghyuck repeats. He moves even closer, until his nose is digging into the hollow of Mark’s cheek, hard enough to feel teeth underneath the flesh. “From here,” he presses a finger to the underside of Mark’s jaw, sinking his pad there as if he’s trying to reach inside. “Alllllll the way ‘til here,” he runs this finger down the front of Mark’s torso slowly, stopping at the tense muscle of his abdomen. “I’ll cut you open and eat you inside.”

Of course, Mark doesn’t run away, ‘cause gullible pretty boys are unable to see obvious warning signs when they’ve got what they want right before their eyes. He only mumbles, “yeah,” brokenly under his breath, his hands coming up to curl around Donghyuck’s nape, thumbs stroking the short hair at the base of his neck. “That’s fucking sexy.”

Then, he’s drawing Donghyuck closer into an open-mouthed kiss. It’s disgustingly slow, thorough in a way Donghyuck doesn’t kiss, as if Mark is trying to reach for all his secrets through the gentle swipe of his tongue.

Donghyuck only tolerates it for a few seconds until his head catches up with what’s happening. He bites down into Mark’s lower lip with no warning, tugging hard as he pulls back, his hands clawing at Mark’s sides to keep him in place when he finally lets go.

“You like it rough, right?” Mark asks. His bottom lip is already swelling up, but he leans forward again as if he doesn’t care. “I can handle rough.”

He has the guts to speak gently about it, has the nerve to press the lie to Donghyuck’s lips softly, cold fingertips resting on the edge of Donghyuck’s jaw as if he’s sure he won’t get cut. Mark is so fucking soft everywhere, kisses with his eyes closed convinced that Donghyuck won’t stab him in the back just for the hell of it, his chest pressed up against Donghyuck’s like an offering, heart stuttering under his ribs as if it’s asking to be stolen.

Donghyuck allows Mark to press light pecks down his neck and thinks, _I’m gonna ruin you for everyone else_.

He must have said it out loud without realizing because Mark stops abruptly—resurfaces from Donghyuck’s neck glassy-eyed and open-mouthed—and whines, almost desperate: “Please.”

And, god, how Donghyuck wants to cradle that innocent face of his between his hands just to push fingers into his temples to force his heart to stop beating. It’s not like he’s actually going to do it, but Donghyuck does press cold palms to Mark’s heated, blushed cheeks, uneven nails dragging over the thin skin that covers his temples as he pushes his head back towards the harsh bathroom light.

“You just agree to everythin’, don’t you?” Donghyuck asks, nosing at the hollow of Mark’s collarbones before licking a stripe up to his chin. “What if I tell you I don’t have a condom on me,” he slides one of his hands into Mark’s hair, fingers twisting the strands to push Mark’s head to the side forcefully so Donghyuck can whisper into his ear. “You’d let me fuck you bare, wouldn’t you? You’d probably like that.”

“Yeah,” Mark’s reply comes in a second, no hesitation. He jerks in Donghyuck’s grasp and turns his head to look him in the eye with blown-out pupils, his face flushed pink and terribly honest. “Yes, however you want it.”

“You’re so fuckin’ gross,” Donghyuck growls, letting go of Mark’s face to slip his fingers into the waistband of his jeans. “Gross ‘nd desperate.”

And Mark keeps nodding, eyes wide open as if he’s scared Donghyuck will vanish if he blinks, as if he wants to make the most out of the little time he’s got because he’s sure Donghyuck will be gone once his high wears off. That last part is very much true.

It wasn’t a lie, Donghyuck thinks as Mark lets himself be shoved into the bathtub in rough pushes. He does want to ruin this boy for everyone else after him, wants to scar his skin ugly enough so no one else will ever look his way, wants to make him sore enough just so Mark won’t be able to take a single step without thinking of Donghyuck.

The worst part is that Mark looks like he wants it all, the pain, the scars, and the nightmares. He turns his back to the devil as if he _trusts him_ , pressing slender fingers to the tiled wall and parting his thighs as an offering.

Donghyuck would swallow him whole if he could. Now, he’s content pushing Mark’s jeans and underwear down all the way to his ankles and fitting his already swollen dick between Mark’s thick thighs.

They get off like that: Donghyuck moaning into Mark’s sweaty nape at the pleasure of the tight heat of Mark’s thighs around him, and Mark panting into the tiles, his forehead resting on the wall as he works himself with an erratic fist.

Donghyuck doesn’t jerk Mark off, but he pushes his chest flush against Mark’s back and shoves him into the tiles until Mark’s cheek is squished flat into the white ceramic. He keeps both of his hands on Mark’s hips, digging his fingers into the flesh until he hits bone. When he comes, Donghyuck thinks of cracking Mark’s hips to the shape of his fingers so no one else’s hands but his will ever fit there.

“So good,” Mark chokes out when Donghyuck’s dick twitches between his thighs, dripping white and sticky down his legs. He’s got his mouth hanging open, bitten lips dragging over the ceramic as he tries to look at Donghyuck over his shoulder with half-closed eyes, his gaze almost black. His red tongue peeks out through the seam of his mouth when his hand speeds over his cock, and whines: “You’re so- So good to me.”

The words have Donghyuck laughing breathlessly against Mark’s still clothed shoulder. He wraps his arms around Mark’s torso to grab at the now wet front of his plaid shirt, his fingertips working one of the buttons open just so he can crawl at Mark’s skin directly. Donghyuck skins his nails into the still tense muscle of Mark’s belly, bites the fabric covering Mark’s shoulder when he feels him recoiling at the touch for a second, only to push closer as if he wants to be sliced in two my Donghyuck’s hands.

“So fuckin’ dumb, aren’t you?” he whispers at the same time that he drags his mouth to the shell of Mark’s ear. He traces the curve with the tip of his tongue, and then he’s biting into the lobe hard enough to hurt. Mark moans out loud, a high-pitched sound that resounds through the bathroom walls and quiets the muffled blast of the music for an infinite second. “Bet you’d thank me if I got my hands inside you.”

Donghyuck finally pushes himself off of Mark, and he doesn’t look back until he’s out of the bathtub and tucked in, completely covered and safe.

Mark stays standing there, chest and cheek pressed into the tiles as he breathes heavily, both of his hands flat against the wall and knuckle-white.

It’s a beautiful sight, the movement of Mark’s shoulders rising and falling fast, the bright blush on his visible cheek, his eyelids falling closed and twinkling with unshed tears. So soft that he’s on the verge of tears when Donghyuck hasn’t even touched him inside.

His pants are still bundled around his ankles, and Donghyuck takes his time to run his eyes down the exposed skin of Mark’s body. He’s managed to dye most of Mark’s skin blood-red, quivering thighs painted white, and hips decorated with the shape of Donghyuck’s fingerprints in an angry way that will probably last a week.

“Same time, same place?” Mark speaks up, his voice all wobbly and faint as his mouth slides against the tiles. “Next week?”

Donghyuck chuckles under his breath, shaking his head when he finally takes his eyes off of Mark’s half-gone body.

“Meant it,” he mumbles as he turns around, aiming for the door. He only stops on his tracks to crouch down and pick up the forgotten joint from the floor. “You’re fuckin’ dumb.”

“Is that a yes?” Mark keeps pushing, but he doesn’t even attempt to move from the bathtub.

Donghyuck doesn’t give him an answer this time. He places the bent joint between his teeth and walks to the door, his shoes leaving dirty brown footprints on his way that look bloody crimson to Donghyuck’s drunken mind.

With the taste of Mark’s mouth in his tongue, Donghyuck slams the door closed on his way out, and calls it a day forever.

**Never keep a** **_see you later._ **

What if Donghyuck wants to spoon Mark’s eyes out of their sockets and cradle them to his chest forever, just so Mark can’t ever blink at anyone else but him? It is not as if he’s actually going to do it.

Even though Mark would probably like it. He would fall to his knees the way one would kneel at church, sweaty hands clasped together and mouth open in a silent moan, waiting for Donghyuck to consume him in any way he’d like.

Mark would offer his body to the devil closed-eyed and bare-chested. But Donghyuck doesn’t want that. He would’ve shown up in the bathroom the previous Saturday if he wanted that.

What he wants, though, is a drink so hard that it will blur the image of Mark with someone else’s lips on his neck. He wants uneven nails crawling at his skin so they will erase the gentle memory of Mark’s soft fingers. He wants to cross the room in four long strides—the same way he did that night he first saw Mark’s pretty face—and extinguish his lit joint against the skin of the boy currently attached to Mark’s mouth, screw the blunt into the flushed flesh of the guy’s cheek until it scars him for the rest of his life.

Donghyuck admitted it to himself once before, Mark Lee has a mouth he would probably punch for. It’s not worth it, though. As much as he likes scraped knuckles and the smell of blood, as much as he likes the grey color of ash and the scent of smoke after a war, it is not worth it.

Soft things are dangerous, they slide between your rotten creases so slowly that you don’t even notice until they are already pulling your heart in a chokehold. Soft boys with round, honest eyes can kill you faster than the reaper because pretty things don’t look like something you should run away from. But Donghyuck knows better.

“Why don’t you go over there?” Jaemin says, leaning across the bar counter of his kitchen just like that very first night. “I’m pretty sure he’d leave that dude in the blink of an eye at your word.”

The best part is that Donghyuck knows Jaemin is right. Too bad the worst part is the exact same reason, ‘cause Donghyuck’s teeth were never meant to bite sweet things—not more than once, no matter how addictive they are—and the toothache is already reaching bone.

“I already fucked ‘im,” Donghyuck says around the joint between his lips. He slides his eyes off of Mark to glare at Jaemin, taking the joint out of his mouth to blow smoke right in his face. “Told you I don’t do repeats.”

Jaemin squints his eyes and quirks an eyebrow at him, alcohol-stained lips slowly stretching into a perfect Cheshire smile. “You already did, though,” he whispers it like a secret, his voice just loud enough to be heard over the music. “I told you there were faces pretty enough to break your dumb rules.”

“Shut the fuck up if you don’t want me to bite your head off,” Donghyuck snaps, leaning closer to shove his half-consumed blunt into Jaemin’s mouth. “Just need someone to fuck tonight.”

“Oh, I’ll just go over there and ask my good old friend Mark to do you the favour!” Jaemin blurts out in his drunk, squeaky voice, slurred around the joint. He pushes himself off the counter fast enough to avoid Donghyuck’s fist when he aims for a punch on the shoulder. “He waited for you all night last week, you know that?” he adds with a giggle as he starts to walk backward, ready to get lost between the crowd at his own house. “Found him passed out in the bathroom floor again. He didn’t look half-dead, though. Just hangover.”

Once Jaemin is gone, Donghyuck is left alone with a half-empty bottle of pink vodka and someone that isn’t him biting Mark’s lips red only a few steps away. He grabs the neck of the bottle with a firm hand and takes a swing, repeating to himself, _I know better_.

An hour later, so drunk that he’s starting to see double, a girl with pretty blond hair and a round face and lips so red she might have used blood as lipstick walks over to Donghyuck. She spreads her rude limbs all over him and sinks hard, nail-polished nails into Donghyuck’s nape. It stings good, but it feels _wrong_.

The thing is, Donghyuck likes it rough for a reason. He likes it rough because he can handle it. He’s been touched as if he was made of porcelain before. In the past, some pretty pale boy touched him as one would touch thin glass so many times that Donghyuck ended up believing him. He walked around with his head low and slumped shoulders, shrank into himself so no one would look at him long enough to shatter him. He walked around naive and shoeless, and he had to step all over the pieces of his own broken self once he found his pretty pale boy touching someone else the way he used to touch Donghyuck.

At least Donghyuck learned to use alcohol to erase the sting of the wound, to stop the nightmares of white tiles smudged crimson in the shape of his bare feet.

Soft things cut deeper than knives, reach bone faster than a dagger. Soft boys stare into your eyes and tell you that you need them, that no one else will ever like you enough to sleep with you, that no one else has the patience to learn you, and you believe them.

But Donghyuck knows better now.

Donghyuck knows better, he doesn't need anyone to learn him—doesn't _want_ anyone to learn him—and he can take it.

Sharp teeth nibbling his collarbones and long nails digging into his shoulders, thick thighs bracing his hips and pressing into the bone, hair so long that it sneaks into his mouth and eyes and threatens him to smother him to death. Donghyuck can _take it_. But he isn’t sure if he wants to, tonight.

When he pushes the girl off his lap with swollen lungs, Donghyuck blames it on the alcohol. When he pulls himself to his feet on clumsy legs and walks into the living room with wobbly steps, he blames it on the alcohol. When he searches for round eyes and a sharp jawline around the crowded room, he blames it on the alcohol. When round, innocent eyes meet his and Donghyuck walks closer, he blames it on the alcohol.

“Hey,” Mark tells him, standing alone in the middle of a room full of faceless people. The guy Donghyuck saw him with earlier is nowhere to be seen, but the shape of his lips is all over Mark’s neck. “Having fun?”

Donghyuck is at that point of drunkenness where your tongue grows heavy inside of your mouth, like a deadweight you could choke into if you aren’t careful enough. He isn’t able to push words past his lips, but he squints his eyes at Mark and curls claw-like fingers around his neck in a useless attempt at covering up the bruises on his pale skin.

Mark blinks at him rapidly, the same way he did that first night, head tilted to the side and pretty shiny lips parting into an awed smile. He’s drunk, too. Blown-eyed, red-cheeked, droopy-lipped drunk. He stares at Donghyuck as if he’s a mirage painted in pretty colors and not some dude in worn-out shorts and a too-big grey tank top that smells of sweat and cheap drinks. Donghyuck tightens his grip around Mark’s neck, hard enough to feel his heart skipping a beat against Donghyuck’s sweaty palm.

Of course, Mark doesn’t run away. His smile spreads lazily on his pretty swollen lips, cheeks hollowing out when he takes a step closer, bringing his own fingers up to Donghyuck’s neck.

It’s as if time is moving in slow motion, and Donghyuck blames that on the alcohol as well. Mark’s movements are sluggish and clumsy as he rubs the pad of his index finger down the side of Donghyuck’s neck, so gently that it raises unwelcome goosebumps at his wake, but Donghyuck is way too drunk to worry about it. Mark keeps going down, tracing the edge of Donghyuck’s collarbone with his fingertip until he dips his finger into the hollow, his drunk eyes following his own movements as if enchanted.

When Mark finally takes his hand off of Donghyuck’s skin, the pad of his finger is stained in crimson carmine, tip so dark red that it looks bloody. Mark looks directly at Donghyuck as he takes his finger into his mouth, his eyebrows arched down innocently over his half-lidded eyes as he wipes his finger clean with his tongue.

The hand Donghyuck still has around Mark’s neck clenches unintentionally, nails pressing into the sides dangerously. Mark laughs around his finger, giggling bubbly and naively unaware of the way the happy sound sends Donghyuck’s mind into override.

Donghyuck wants to press harsher into Mark’s pale neck until his nails break the skin, he wants to trace a bloody 6 into the side and clean it off with his tongue, just to wound it open again and again and again. He wants to leave his trace all over the fresh bruises on Mark’s neck and teach everyone else who got there first, who claimed him first.

But Mark curls his hand around Donghyuck’s wrist softly, his wet finger pressing to the jutted out bone there as he tugs it off and away from his neck. “See you later?” he screams between the noise, but he manages to sound gentle either way.

Time never moves the same when you’re drunk. Donghyuck doesn’t know what time it is, doesn’t know what _later_ means, lost track of how many seconds they’ve been standing here, face to face in the middle of Jaemin’s living room. Mark always moves the same when he’s drunk, though. He always stares at Donghyuck as if he wants to be eaten alive, as if he doesn’t even realize what the look in his eyes means. Donghyuck thinks _I know better_ , but he feels himself nodding in slow motion before he can stop himself.

Then, Mark is gone, and Donghyuck doesn’t see him again until he stumbles into the bathroom, alcohol knows how many minutes later.

“I thought you wouldn’t come,” Mark says when Donghyuck clicks the door closed with his back. He stays there leaning against the wooden surface, looking down at Mark’s sprawled body on the floor. “Last time you didn’t come.”

Donghyuck doesn’t reply, he tries to shake his head no, but he’s so drunk that the motion makes him feel dizzy. He pushes himself off the door instead, walking closer until both of his feet step between Mark’s open legs.

“I know you said it was a one-time thing, but-,” Mark keeps blabbering, dripping honesty all over like a broken faucet, the same way he always does when he allows alcohol to speak for him. He’s looking up at Donghyuck with those round, big eyes, a mix of black and red and hope that’s turning Donghyuck’s stomach inside out. The worst part is that Mark is fucking clueless about it. “But it’s been more than that, right?” Mark mumbles, reaching out with shaky hands to tangle his fingers into the laces of Donghyuck’s shoes. “I was, like, kinda disappointed, you know? When you didn’t show up…”

The bruises on Mark’s neck are clearer here, under the harsh white light of the bathroom. He’s wearing a tight black shirt that's stretched out around the collar, revealing purple blooms that travel from where his jaw meets his ears, all the way down to his collarbones, and get lost under the fabric. His lips aren’t smooth and pink like the night Donghyuck first met him, they are dark red and swollen, bitten raw by teeth that aren’t Donghyuck’s.

Mark keeps tugging at Donghyuck’s shoelaces, his pads going blood-red when he tangles the cords tight around his fingers. “You are quiet today,” he mumbles. He gives a sharp pull to the laces when he doesn’t get a reply, as if he’s trying to undo the knots and take Donghyuck’s shoes off, just so maybe he can find answers between his toes.

And maybe Donghyuck wants to ask Mark to take his laces off just so he can tie them around Mark’s wrists to stop the blood from flowing through his fingers. He wants to tie a knot just tight enough to make Mark’s hands go bone-white and corpse-stiff, just so Mark won’t be able to reach for anyone else but Donghyuck ever again.

It’s not as if he’s actually going to do it, as pretty as Mark’s pale skin would look decorated with angry pink stripes.

Mark lets go of Donghyuck’s shoes to travel his fingertips to the jutted-out bones of Donghyuck’s ankles, cold hands grabbing at his legs as he pushes his fingers up until he’s settled in the soft flesh at the back of Donghyuck’s knees. Donghyuck wonders if Mark is truly this naive or if he’s faking it, because pretty faces can hide the darkest of secrets under innocent eyes, and there is no way Mark doesn’t know the effect he has on people when he waits like this: shorts ridden up his thighs, mouth-half open as he looks up at Donghyuck expectantly, fingers digging into Donghyuck’s skin as hard as he can. And it’s still gentler than Donghyuck’s ever had.

And what if Donghyuck wants to spoon Mark’s eyes out of their sockets and cradle them to his chest? It is not as if he’s actually going to do it.

What he does, though, is curl his fingers into the jet-black of Mark’s hair and force him to his knees, the tiles clanking under Mark’s weight like white marble shattering.

Donghyuck can imagine it: Mark, with dislocated kneecaps from kneeling in front of him for too long, pale skin turning pretty blueberry dark. He’s always so eager and pliant, mouth half-open on the edge of a silent moan, ready to choke on whatever Donghyuck is willing to give him.

He keeps his hand twisted in Mark’s hair, just as hard as Mark was twisting his fingers in Donghyuck’s shoelaces earlier. He pulls at the strands on the crown of Mark’s head to keep his chin raised as he tugs his jeans and underwear down, just low enough to free his already hard dick. He’s been aching since Mark licked fake-blood off his fingertip, and he’s about to lose his mind if he doesn’t get something real now.

Mark keeps looking up at Donghyuck’s face diligently, even if this is the most skin Donghyuck has offered him since they met, always chest to back whenever they got as close as possible. Mark doesn’t allow his eyes to slide down curiously, he remains still, his mouth hanging open as if his jaw has gone slack when Donghyuck thumbs at his lower lip harshly, his pad slipping between the wet flesh and Mark’s teeth, scratching the delicate insides carelessly.

Mark only stops looking at him when Donghyuck shoves himself into his mouth in a single fast thrust. He pushes all the way in, doesn’t stop until his tip hits the back of Mark’s throat hard enough to cause his eyes to slip shut.

A loud whine crawls up Mark’s chest and vibrates around Donghyuck when he fists Mark’s hair even rougher, forcing his head back so they can look each other in the face properly. Mark’s got pretty lips stretched wide around Donghyuck’s length, warmth and wetness engulfing Donghyuck so sweetly that he has to dig his heels into the tiles just to keep himself grounded so his legs won’t quiver embarrassingly.

Mark doesn’t gag or move or complain, he only screws his eyes shut and slides sweaty fingers further up the back of Donghyuck’s thighs, slipping underneath his shorts. He keeps blowing hard through his nose, his ragged exhalations hitting the sensitive skin of Donghyuck’s exposed lower abdomen. Donghyuck has to grit his teeth to stop himself from recoiling at the soft sensation, his fingertips digging harder into Mark’s skull.

“Look at me,” Donghyuck forces out with a grunt, nails ripping the already bruised skin at the sides of Mark’s nape as he slides his hand down. And Mark moans like he loves it, moans like he’d let Donghyuck skin him alive just so he can walk inside of Mark’s body, maybe trade skins for a lifetime. “Don’t stop looking at me.”

And Mark does as he’s told. He opens his eyes slowly, blinks up at Donghyuck with blown-wide pupils, red-rimmed eyes, wet eyelashes. And he even tries to nod when Donghyuck pushes whispers, “Don’t even blink,” and pushes Mark even closer by the back of his neck.

He sucks Donghyuck off with wide open eyes that get redder and glassier with each thrust, his sight welling up with every sharp movement of hips. Donghyuck shoves himself into Mark without mercy, hitting the back of his throat as if he’s trying to break right through his neck. And maybe he is.

The prettiest part of it is that Mark looks like he doesn’t even _want_ to blink, not even when tears start to hang from his eyelashes, dripping from the corners of his eyes messily, wetting his full cheeks, hollowed-out and flushed red as if he’s been punched.

Donghyuck cups the underside of Mark’s chin with his free hand, shaky fingers screwing into Mark’s cheeks hard enough to feel himself underneath the flesh, moving in and out of Mark’s mouth as if that's where he’s always been meant to be. And maybe he is, since Mark belongs to Donghyuck and no one else, even if he may not know it yet.

He keeps shoving himself deeper down Mark’s throat with each thrust, and Mark keeps moaning around him nonstop, fingers kneading at the skin of Donghyuck’s thighs as tears keep streaming down his cheeks, shining pink under the harsh light of the bathroom. Donghyuck’s been waiting, and Mark hasn’t blinked once since Donghyuck told him not to.

Maybe Donghyuck can’t spoon Mark’s eyes out of their sockets and keep them all to himself, but he can etch his face into Mark’s retinas, become the only thing he’ll ever see every time he blinks from now on. And Mark looks at him as if that’s exactly what he wants, eyes getting out of focus, but staying open wide.

Donghyuck can’t stop himself from quivering as pleasure keeps building up in his belly. It makes him feel incredibly weak, the way his knees feel jelly-soft and cotton-delicate when Mark’s teeth scrape over the upper side of his dick at a particularly hard thrust. His hips stutter messily, the head of his dick digging into Mark’s right cheek, his hands loosening up their grip on Mark’s head for a single second where Donghyuck is left completely breathless, about to explode white and bitter all over the bathroom.

It is fleeting, but it’s enough to break Mark out of the spell. He pushes himself off of Donghyuck, blinking tears away as he coughs drily, precum gathering on the seams of his abused lips, spit dribbling down his chin.

“Gonna take your eyes out if you blink again,” Donghyuck chokes out with wasted words, his throat on fire and cracked open as if he’s been the one doing the sucking all this time. “I'll make you look ‘t me until you dream of my face,” he spits out, his hands coming up to cradle Mark’s head again, thumbs padding at the wet skin under his eyes.

“I already do,” Mark confesses in a hoarse whisper, his bare knees dragging over the tiles in clumsy movements that Donghyuck is sure must hurt. It’s fascinating, Mark willingly scrapping his body raw all for Donghyuck, peeling himself open as he waits for Donghyuck to consume him from the inside. “I told you. I already dream of you,” he keeps blabbering, words falling off his spit-slick swollen lips shamelessly as he pushes one of his right hand down the front of his own pants.

“You’re so-” Donghyuck breathes out, stumbling backward a little in wobbly legs. The only thing that keeps him from losing his balance is Mark’s other hand, clasped tightly around the back of Donghyuck’s knee to pull him close again. “You’re so fuckin’ gross,” Donghyuck giggles faintly, watching fascinated as Mark’s pretty mouth falls open when the tip of Donghyuck’s angry-red dick bumps against his lower lip accidentally. “So, so nasty. You like this more than I do,” Donghyuck keeps laughing, high-pitched and loud as if he’s out of his mind.

Mark doesn’t even deny it, he only pushes himself closer, taking Donghyuck back into the wet warmth of his mouth with pretty lips. Mark’s tongue laps at the underside of Donghyuck’s dick, eyes squinted but never quite closing as he moans around him, sucking hard with hollow cheeks as if he wants to force Donghyuck to come down his throat and stain him inside.

So Donghyuck does just that. He twists his fingers into the jet-black strands of Mark’s hair until his knuckles go marble-white, and he thrusts into his mouth hard and fast, decisive and goal-oriented even when his knees start to shake again. Mark keeps his eyes open the whole way through, the hand in his pants speeding up to keep the same pace as Donghyuck’s hips, his other hand drawing slow, gentle circles in the back of Donghyuck’s thighs.

It’s so fucking ridiculous, the way Mark has it in him to stay kind and soft when he’s being rubbed raw. He’s all wet skin and swollen flesh and shallow breaths, he’s being punched white inside out, and he still touches Donghyuck as if he deserves the gentleness.

Climax hits Donghyuck like a fist to his gut, forces him to double over, his fingers sliding off Mark’s hair to dig into his shoulders for some sort of leverage. He twitches inside of Mark’s mouth, his vision flashing a mix of white and red when Mark sucks him through it with his pretty hollow cheeks, sending Donghyuck’s muscles into a quivering mess that he can’t escape, not this time.

Mark tries to swallow everything Donghyuck has to offer him, but he ends up choking on him, spluttering when Donghyuck regains enough sanity to straighten his back and pull himself out. Mark stays kneeling down, Donghyuck’s vision clearing up slowly to reveal him sweaty and flushed, traces of Donghyuck’s cum staining the foreign bruises on Mark’s body white.

“I didn’t know you got jealous,” Mark says with a light giggle that sounds wrong in his hoarse voice, his fucked out throat so spent that it’s difficult to hear him over the muffled noise of the music still playing outside.

Donghyuck doesn’t reply, focused on tucking himself in as he thinks of how his knuckles would feel pressed up against Mark’s wet, feverish-pink cheeks. And Mark smiles at him crooked and dopily, cheeks hollowing out once more in the right shape of a fist. Mark takes his hand off of his own pants, sticky fingers pressing against the titles to push himself to his feet. The sight of Mark’s crimson knees would have Donghyuck doubling over again if he wasn’t gut-empty.

“It happens to me, too, you know?” Mark keeps talking, always voicing words that shouldn’t belong to his lips. He moves closer to Donghyuck, dragging his socked feet over the tiles lazily, too weak on the knees to even take a proper step. “I get jealous too, I mean,” he says, bringing his clean hand to Donghyuck’s neck to pick up some of the dry lipstick that’s still staining his skin crimson. Mark doesn’t clean it up with his tongue this time, he only stares at his finger and smiles like he knows something that Donghyuck doesn’t. “You don't have to, though.”

“Here comes your weird shit,” Donghyuck scoffs, eyes rolling into its sockets. He gives his back to Mark to stop himself from grasping his wrist and shove that red-stained finger into his mouth. He wants to bite into the tender flesh of Mark’s pads, wants to tear through the skin with his teeth as if they were daggers and find out if Mark is as sweet-blooded as he looks. “Always tryin’ to ruin my fun with your nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense.” Donghyuck keeps his back to Mark, but he feels him moving closer anyway. Then, there are fingertips touching at the jutted out bones of his wrists tentatively, and Donghyuck hates that he doesn’t hate it, the palms of his hands tingling slightly with the need to grab Mark’s fingers and squeeze until their bones mold into each other’s. “I know- I know you want me. And you can have me if-”

“Gettin’ real fuckin brave there, aren’t you?” Donghyuck tugs his hands away, closing the space to the door in a long stride. “I don’t want shit,” he spits out, looking at Mark over his shoulder. “Don’t come next time if you can’t handle it, pretty boy.”

The compliment falls off Donghyuck’s lips before he can stop it, and he’d be mad at himself if it wasn’t for the way Mark’s already flushed face lits up bright-pink. He’s so painfully honest in everything he does, has _I’m yours_ written all over his body in neon lights, still red-rimmed eyes growing black with never-ending want.

“I’ll take anything,” Mark says, laying out all his cards face-up, trusting Donghyuck not to cheat ‘cause he’s as lovely as he is naive.

Donghyuck doesn’t reply before he leaves. He smiles his reaper smile, twisted and sharp, and thinks, _I’m gonna ruin you for everyone else_.

The best and worst part is that he knows for a fact that, if he said it out loud, Mark would beg for it.

**Don’t stay the night.**

“Having fun?” Jaemin’s voice cuts through the blood rushing in Donghyuck’s ears, jarringly sweet and too nice to be true.

When Donghyuck opens his eyes, he comes face to face with Jaemin’s pearl-white smile, splitting his face in two like a maniac, eyes bloodshot and wide as he stares at back at Donghyuck.

“You’re being fuckin’ creepy,” Donghyuck says, dragging his words because he’s already that drunk. He only stops the guy attached to his neck when Jaemin stays still, too-big eyes focused on Donghyuck’s like a threat. “Knew you were into weird shit, but you could at least ask first,” Donghyuck blurts out as he racks his fingers through the nameless guy just to tug him away from his neck in a sharp tug. “I’m down to many things, but not to please your voyeurism kink.”

“I know well what you’re up to, babe,” Jaemin says, still using that sickeningly sweet tone he talks with when he’s been rubbed the wrong way. “You should’ve found somewhere private to do this if you didn’t want to be interrupted, but I guess you didn’t wanna go to the bathroom, um?”

Donghyuck squints at Jaemin with blurry eyes, takes in the sharp edge of his smile and the teasing tilt of his head. He pushes his tongue into his cheek to stop himself from biting, tempted to pull the guy against him just to piss Jaemin off and ignore whatever bullshit he came to preach.

“You’re always really fuckin’ brave, aren’t you?” Donghyuck says, wrapping an arm around the nameless guy that was just sucking into his neck, his fingers clenching into his shoulder like a claw when Jaemin follows the movement with his eyes. Jaemin’s smile only widens, proud and triumphant. Donghyuck should’ve stepped all over him with his dirty shoes a long time ago, should’ve reduced him to pink minced meat when he had the chance. It’s not as if he didn’t try, but Jaemin stuck to his soles like bubble gum, and Donghyuck has never learned how to get rid of people that don’t want him for his body, but for every rotten piece inside of it. “I need to smash your perfect teeth in to get you back in your place.”

Jaemin lifts an unimpressed eyebrow at him, too used to his barking to even crack a smile at it. “I’m right at my place,” he says, leaning against the counter next to Donghyuck, his chest pressed to Donghyuck’s shoulder. “And your new boy toy isn’t welcome here anymore,” he wiggles his fingers in front of the nameless dude as if he’s trying to spell him away, his cheeks puffing out as he smiles like expired candy, sweet-looking and poisonous. “B-bye.”

They are so incredibly alike that it almost pisses Donghyuck off. Jaemin is like a whole version of him, chiseled rounder and brighter and holier. Not by much, ‘cause Donghyuck knows him well enough to affirm that Jaemin’s morals don’t rise further above his ankles. But at least he’s got them, morals and a conscience he has to drown with alcohol and choke with weed. That’s why Donghyuck’s got more power than him, because all he has to erase is an old face.

“You know I’ve already lost count of the times I’ve found Mark passed out on my bathroom floor?” Jaemin says, speaking way too steady to be comfortable. “I think the dude’s gonna have to pay for a physio, he’s gonna break his neck one of these nights,” he laughs nonchalantly, far too sober to Donghyuck’s liking.

“You need another drink.”

Donghyuck is already reaching out for his half-full class of vodka when Jaemin stops him with a firm hand, rough fingers tugging at the collar of Donghyuck’s t-shirt to keep him still. “What I need is for you to stop fucking around with Mark.”

There’s a second of silence where Donghyuck is about to burst into laughter at the look on Jaemin’s face, grimaced into an anger that doesn’t suit him, that doesn’t belong. He lifts an eyebrow at him, curling his own hand around Jaemin’s wrist.

“You jealous, now?” he whispers into the loud music, leaning closer so his drunken breath hits Jaemin right in the face, softening that out-of-place frown off his face. “You know we would never work, baby,” he pouts exaggeratedly at the same time that he tugs at Jaemin’s hand harsher, trying to get him to let go unsuccessfully.

“You’ve been with him for _weeks_ , Hyuck,” Jaemin retaliates, so close to Donghyuck that there’s droplets of spit falling on his cheeks. “You don’t need this,” he pulls at Donghyuck’s collar hard enough to stretch it with a jarring sound, pushing his other hand into the sore flesh of Donghyuck’s neck. “You don’t even _like_ this.”

Donghyuck can’t look at his own throat, but the way it stings under the bite of Jaemin’s nails tells him that it’s probably blooming crimson already.

He hates that Jaemin knows him well enough to preach about what Donghyuck does or doesn’t like and get it right. Donghyuck despises getting marked, he always scrubs his neck raw when he’s sober on a useless attempt at getting rid of the bruises, because he doesn’t belong to anyone, and he never will. But it’s not about belonging anymore, it’s not about allowing other people to own him, it’s about the power.

It’s about Mark’s face when he sees purple over Donghyuck’s tan sink in the shape of other people’s mouths. It’s all about the gentleness of Mark’s eyes dripping into dark lust. It’s about the way he wants to claim Donghyuck as his so badly that he forgets his kindness for a few seconds. It’s about the way he unravels for Donghyuck, curling into a rare wrath born from pure want, trying to chase after something he’s never gonna have. Because Donghyuck might want to curl his shoelaces around Mark’s limbs as if he were a puppet, knots tight enough that you will have to break teeth in order to chew them undone. But there’s no way he’s ever gonna be allowing Mark to tie him up longer than a night.

Jaemin wouldn’t get it, though. Donghyuck’s the only one who’s ever seen Mark turning himself inside out. Donghyuck knows better.

“You gonna lecture me when you can’t even keep count of the people you fuck in a week?” Donghyuck laughs, finally peeling Jaemin’s fingers off of the fabric of his shirt and pushing him away.

“As if you do!” Jaemin exclaims, bouncing back right into Donghyuck’s face as fast as he was shoved away. “But unlike you, I don’t have anyone waiting for me.”

“This is why we never talk when you’re sober. You’re a pain in the ass, dude.” Donghyuck brings a hand to Jaemin’s chin, gripping his cheeks between his fingers and squeezing tight. “Listen to me. I don’t owe Mark shit. I told ‘im what he was gettin’ into. Wanna lecture anyone? Go to him for bein’ stupid if he can’t fuckin’ handle it.”

Jaemin wiggles into Donghyuck’s grasp until he’s able to free himself, cheeks rubbed red when he says, “He’s not stupid, he’s just too nice.”

“That’s his problem. Not mine, not yours,” Donghyuck points out, digging his index finger into Jaemin’s chest, right over his heart, like a dagger. “Why you actin’ like you give a fuck all of a sudden, anyway?”

“He’s still my friend, Hyuck,” Jaemin frowns at him, swating Donghyuck’s hand off his chest. “You have no clue what he looks like in the mornings. Fucking gone, just- Just sick.”

“’m not forcin’ him to do shit, alright?” Donghyuck places both of his hands on Jaemin’s shoulders to get him to look at him in the eyes. “You believe me?” he asks and waits for a heartbeat, fingers pressing into the tense flesh where Jaemin’s shoulders meet his neck, so hard that it must be painful. Jaemin twists his mouth into something sharp, but he still nods. “You can quit playin’ the angel card now, hm?” Donghyuck giggles at the same time that he lets Jaemin go with a push. Then, he pats Jaemin’s cheek twice, because he’s earned it. “I know you better than that.”

“D’you wanna know me deeper?” Jaemin shoots back instantly, smiling crooked and cheeky in the way Donghyuck knows him best.

Jaemin is wiggling his eyebrows as if nothing has happened. He bounces back into his carefree self in a second, reaching out to tug at the hem of Donghyuck’s t-shirt playfully. But it doesn’t sound like the usual empty banter and light-hearted flirting. Donghyuck feels under fire, the barrel of a gun pointed at his head by the only hand he would ever dare to say he trusts.

Donghyuck knows he’s no good, but he’s never painted himself as something he isn’t just to get other people to want him. He doesn’t walk around pretending to be gold-hearted and pure, he lives with bare claws and hisses threats under his breath. He’s got nothing to offer but a good night, and he sells himself at face value. Donghyuck hasn’t asked anyone to stick around in a long, long time. Instead, he bites people off of his skin with shark-like teeth to keep them as far away as possible. Jaemin should know this better than anyone, he’s experienced it first-hand.

It is not Donghyuck’s fault that Mark keeps clinging to his body with soft, sticky hands. After all, he has warned him many times. But honest pretty boys never know better, and Donghyuck hasn’t come here to teach survival to anyone.

“What would your dear childhood friend say if he could hear you right now?” Donghyuck pouts, taking a fast step backward and yanking his shirt free from the grip of Jaemin’s fingers.

“C’mon, don’t dramatize.” Jaemin clicks his tongue, eyes rolling in an exasperation he can’t afford. “I’m just worried about him.”

He’s still talking when Donghyuck grabs his glass of vodka to chug down the rest of the drink in a single gulp. Donghyuck doesn’t stick around to hear the rest, he turns his back on Jaemin and heads up the stairs to the only place he knows he’ll always be worshiped in.

“You’re late,” Mark says as soon as Donghyuck makes it into the bathroom, head lolling over the edge of the bathtub as he drags the last word out like an impatient little kid.

He always waits like this lately, sprawled on the tiles, staring up at the white light bulb until Donghyuk arrives. He’s blinking fast at Donghyuck now, as if trying to figure out if he’s actually there or if it’s just a trick of his imagination. He’s got bloodshot eyes and pitch-black pupils, dry chapped lips that he keeps biting on when Donghyuck drags his feet closer.

“You gonna keep tabs on me now?” Donghyuck laughs, airy and light, the anger he was feeling towards Jaemin parked outside of the bathroom door. “You put a leash on me ‘nd you won’t see me ever again,” he warns, playful but firm, his body falling heavily on the floor as he slumps next to Mark.

“I just get worried sometimes,” Mark confesses. He’s always confessing, always talking too much, expecting too much, hoping too much.

You’d think a good boy would know not to share his secrets with the devil, but lately Mark looks at Donghyuck like all he wants to do is sin all over him. He’s frowning now, pretty mouth twisted in a childish pout as he reaches out to touch the side of Donghyuck’s neck, cold fingers tracing the line of his throat lightly.

“Got high without me, asshole?” Donghyuck says, taking in the weed-red edge of Mark’s eyes now that they are closer, the pink-flushed skin covering his sharp cheekbones, the bitter smell of his breath when he sighs into Donghyuck’s face.

But Mark doesn’t reply, he’s stuck in his own head, transitioning right before Donghyuck’s eyes. He wraps a clammy hand around Donghyuck’s neck gently, pressing his sweaty palm to the Adam’s apple carefully. And Donghyuck knows Mark is trying to cover up all the strangers’ bruises on his tan neck with his slender fingers, he _knows_ Mark is thinking a leash would look pretty good around Donghyuck’s neck, turning golden into purple.

Donghyuck knows ‘cause he’s got more than enough experience on thinking the same thing about Mark—about the countless people he’s forgotten the names of—and Mark’s innocent eyes look a lot prettier when they are dripping lust, wide open as if scared of his own thoughts.

“Wanna put a leash on me, pretty boy?” Donghyuck giggles, drunk not only on alcohol, but on the power of being able to turn a gentle boy into a reaper. He places his hand on Mark’s waist, tugs at his shirt until he can hear the seams tearing apart, and imagines it is Mark’s skin under his nails. “Want me all for yourself, right? Greedy bastard.”

Mark crumples so easily at Donghyuck’s words, whines high-pitched and oh-so-desperate as he chews into his lower lip until it goes pale. Then, he’s letting go of Donghyuck to fumble with his pants, pushing his short sweats and underwear down in harsh pulls.

Donghyuck laughs again as he works his zipper open, sliding his jeans down just enough to free his half-hard dick. “Always so impatient,” he giggles as he stares at Mark through his half-lidded eyes. “Calm down. ‘m not goin’ anywhere.”

But Mark is already kicking off his pants, even if embarrassment has added color to his already flushed, drunken cheeks. He crawls to Donghyuck bare-assed and with his socks still on, grabs the back of Donghyuck’s ankles and pulls hard to force his legs flat against the tiles. Then, Mark is throwing a bare pale leg on top of Donghyuck, climbing into his lap with red knees and clumsy movements. His hands are back at Donghyuck’s throat as soon as he’s sitting comfortably on his thighs, thumbs tucked under Donghyuck’s chin as he pushes him harshly against the marble of the bathtub.

“You like it rough, don’t you?” Mark whispers, his breath smelling like hard alcohol and cheap weed as he speaks right into Donghyuck’s face, pushing and pushing so Donghyuck’s shoulder blades dig into the ceramic of the bathtub. He wiggles in Donghyuck’s lap, his bare ass dragging over the fabric of his jeans, probably reddening up the frail skin. “Gonna give it to you rough. I’m gonna make you think of me and me only.”

Mark always gets like this when Donghyuck shows up for him with someone else’s kisses all over his skin, someone else’s nails carved on his shoulders in foreing half-moons. All Donghyuck can do is giggle dizzily, his own hands coming up to cradle Mark’s hips under his shirt, pushing him even closer when Mark leans down to bite at his lips.

Donghyuck moans into it, opening up to allow Mark to suck messily on his tongue, his fingers kneading the sides of Donghyuck’s neck as if he’s trying to rub the bruises away.

“Get your hands off of me,” Mark mumbles into Donghyuck’s mouth, tasting alcohol-sweet and jealous-bitter at the same time. Donghyuck can’t help the burst of laughter that bubbles up his chest at the feeble authority in Mark’s tone, equally amused and turned on when Mark pulls back to look at him with shy eyebrows lowered over his glassy eyes. The shyness is fleeting, though, it disappears into a pleasing smile when Donghyuck chases after Mark’s mouth instinctively. “I said,” Mark repeats, the grin on his face looking far too soft in comparison to the firm tone of his voice, “hands off of me.”

Donghyuck crooks an eyebrow at him, lifting his hands in the air with an amused smirk. “Alright, sir,” he teases, leaning closer to lick at the thumb-shaped dip under Mark’s bottom lip. “You gonna try to boss me around tonight? Got you all jealous, didn’t I? That’s so cute.”

It is meant to be offensive. The adjective rolls off of Donghyuck’s tongue like mockery, but Mark whines as if he’s flattered, going all mushy into Donghyuck’s lap at the double-edged praise.

Mark is always so soft. Even now, sliding onto Donghyuck’s lap so he can grind their hard-ons together. He’s pretty pink and so damn soft that Donghyuck wants to crush him, wants to spread his hands all over him and knead at his pale skin to bundle him together. Donghyuck wants to shrink him until he can tuck him inside of himself forever, in the space between his chin and belly button, squeezed right in between his lungs, where Mark would be safe from everything but the sharp edges of Donghyuck’s ribs.

“Got a condom?” Mark mumbles into the crook of Donghyuck’s neck, his front teeth sinking into the tender flesh there as he keeps moving in circles in Donghyuck’s lap, chasing any kind of friction.

Donghyuck lowers his hands to look for a condom in the pockets of his jeans, but Mark tenses up on top of him, his spine going rigid like an animal ready to attack as he pushes uneven nails into Donghyuck’s shoulders.

“I didn’t say you could move,” he says harshly, resurfacing from Donghyuck’s neck with blood-red lips and ink-blank eyes, looking liquid and ready to drip all over Donghyuck. “Hands behind your neck,” he orders, pushing at Donghyuck’s shoulders to slam him against the wall of the bathtub harder than before.

It shouldn’t feel this good, Donghyuck thinks as he interlocks his hands at his nape. Mark starts to map out his thighs gently, fingers dipping and running through the fabric of his jeans in search of a condom, and Donghyuck sits perfectly still and watches.

Donghyuck has never liked giving out power because, after all, the only way to be completely sure no one will step over you is to step over them first. But, suddenly, Mark is pushing him to the ground as if he means it. He’s holding a condom between his fingers while the pads of his other hand dig into Donghyuck’s chest, over the fabric of his shirt, pulling him down, down, down, until Donghyuck’s back is flat against the floor, his skull digging into the titles painfully. Turns out violence feels best when it comes from gentle hands.

Mark is blushing from the tip of his nose to the tip of his ears, looking like he’s drowning in embarrassment as he holds himself tall over Donghyuck’s hips. He’s soft and shy and so, so pretty, testing his own confidence just for Donghyuck, hardening all of his edges as much as his body will allow him to go just so he can give it to Donghyuck the way he likes it.

He’s looking at Donghyuck the way Donghyuck knows he always looks at Mark, dark-eyed and dry-mouthed, twisting the fabric of Donghyuck’s shirt between his fingers as if he’s making a tremendous effort to not rip it in rags.

That hungry look in his eyes has Donghyuck wondering, _would you still want me if I turned myself inside out_. But he doesn’t ask out loud, he only bends his knees to force Mark to slide further up his lap, bringing his hands to Mark’s nape to pull him closer roughly.

“Get on with it,” he whispers a milimeter away from Mark’s lips.

The kiss never comes, though. Mark pushes himself back abruptly, growling in a visceral way Donghyuck has never heard of him before. “I said hands off of me,” he bites out, dropping the still closed condom on Donghyuck’s chest to grab his wrists and push them above his head.

Donghyuck can’t stop his back from arching into it, a moan slipping out of his throat at the unnatural stretch of his arms when Mark pins them to the tiles, at the uncomfortable angle of his shoulders. He groans incredibly high at the painful grip Mark is keeping on his wrists, fingers tied around Donghyuck as if he wants to mold the jutted-out bones underneath Donghyuck’s skin in the shape of his hands.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, the dizzying pleasure shooting through Donghyuck’s body at the scorching pain, he’s always liked it rough, after all. But it hasn't been feeling that good lately, his skin yearning for something sweeter when people pushed at his skin as if they were trying to undo him. Now, he’s starting to think that maybe it’s not about how they touch him, maybe it’s about who’s touching him. He still likes it rough for a reason, and there’s something intoxicating in turning a soft boy hard as steel.

“You like it, right?” Mark whispers into Donghyuck’s ear, his fingers tightening their grip on his wrists and pressing them harder to the cold tiles. “Told you I can give it to you rough,” he presses the words to the shell of Donghyuck’s ear, tracing its shape with his tongue gently before he’s biting down into the lobe, meaning to hurt. “You don’t need anybody else.”

Donghyuck would fight him if he wasn’t so turned on that is painful. He writhes under Mark’s body, his hips stuttering as he tries to chase after any kind of friction. “Stop blabberin’ and let me fuck you already,” he growls, his back arching off the tiles as Mark keeps biting and sucking on his neck, covering the foreign bruises there with his own shapes.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Mark growls back, sinking teeth into Donghyuck’s chin harshly, tearing a broken whine out of Donghyuck’s mouth.

Desperate, greedy, nasty. Donghyuck sounds like everything he likes to call Mark when he fucks him. Gross, impatient, eager. But he will have time to be disappointed in himself once he’s sober. Right now, he’s too out of his mind to think about anything other than Mark’s fingerprints around his wrists.

Mark bites on his lower lip as he removes his hands from Donghyuck’s wrists, wrapping one of them around Donghyuck’s neck instead, pressing on the wet and sore skin too light to hurt, but hard enough to matter. He keeps his thumb and index finger under the edges of Donghyuck’s jaw, forcing his head still as he fingers himself open with his other hand. Mark looks down at Donghyuck with blown-wide eyes, his glassy gaze roaming all over him as if he’s undressing Donghyuck in his mind, fantasizing of what’s underneath his shirt, as if he’d love to get his hands under his skin. It’s not as if Donghyuck will ever allow Mark to sneak inside. He may be a little bit out of his mind tonight, but he still wants to survive.

Donghyuck sure wants to get his hands inside of Mark. He’s almost desperate to reach out and replace Mark’s fingers with his own. He wants to slam his body into Mark’s and turn them around, pin Mark against the tiles, sink his index finger in the soft flesh at the end of Mark’s ribs and dig a hole big enough to peek inside, just so he can lick it closed afterward and find out if Mark’s blood tastes as sweet as his lips.

His hands stay pressed to the floor, though. Donghyuck lowered his arms the second Mark let go of his wrists, and now he’s got sweaty palms flat against the tiles, pushing down with white fingertips, trying to break through the ceramic the way he’d like to break through Mark’s chest.

When Mark finally lets go of his neck, Donghyuck remains perfectly still, eyeing him carefully as Mark finally picks up the almost forgotten condom.

“Alright,” Mark whispers as he leans closer to Donghyuck’s face, fingers sliding out of himself to get lost between the sweaty strands of Donghyuck’s hair. It should be gross, but Donghyuck hasn’t been clean in a very long time—not on the outside, and definitely not on the inside—and the sting of Mark’s usually careful fingers tugging at his hair as if he’s trying to tear it out of its roots is too good to care about decency. “Open it,” Mark _orders_ , the skin of his face still painted red, but out of desperation instead of embarrassment. He taps Donghyuck’s chin with the condom twice, his pretty lips spreading into a glassy lopsided smile. “No hands.”

“I said I like it rough,” Donghyuck turns his face away abruptly as he lifts himself on his elbows. “Said nothing ‘bout bein’ bossed around,” he adds, one of his hands coming off the tiles to steal the condom out of Mark’s fingers.

But Mark is faster than him, he moves his hand up in the air and slams an open palm against Donghyuck’s chest, pushing him back flat against the floor so hard that Donghyuck swears he can feel his shoulder blades cracking like marble. He goes a little breathless at the impact, body tingling from his toes to his fingertips, his heart jumping to his throat as his eyes go unfamiliarly blurred. Turns out tears can cloud your vision faster than alcohol.

“I-” Mark starts, his voice coming out frail and low-pitched as if he can’t believe what he’s just done. His eyes are incredibly wide, and Donghyuck isn’t sure if they are shining with tears or if it’s only a mirror of his own gaze, but he still holds Mark’s eyes with his chin held high even when he’s trapped against the floor. He stares and stares defiantly, daring Mark to not apologize without words. “I think you like both,” Mark talks after he swallows hard.

He starts to rock in Donghyuck’s lap lazily, gliding their hard-ons against each other in gentle thrusts until he’s got Donghyuck clawing at the tiles so fiercely that he’s half-sure his nails are about to snap off of his skin. It’s driving Donghyuck up the wall, the way Mark keeps coming in and out of softness like the current.

“I think you like _me_ ,” Mark says, blinking fast at his own words before his pretty lips curl in a sharp smirk, a twisted thing that he’s probably picked up from Donghyuck.

“So fuckin’ brave,” Donghyuck mumbles under his breath, his heart beating beneath his eyes as he watches Mark dissolve in a fit of almost hysterical giggles on top of him, “I should skin you alive to bring you down a notch.” Mark’s laughter keeps getting louder as Donghyuck speaks, his cheeks hollowed out in that fist-shaped pretty curve as he rips the condom open with his teeth. “But you’d probably like that, right? Sadistic motherfucker.”

Mark keeps smiling like a nightmare when he rolls the condom on Donghyuck, leaning closer on his knees and hands to whisper into Donghyuck’s ear, “I’m learning from the best.”

When Mark finally lowers himself on Donghyuck’s dick, he rides him like a sex toy. He keeps his red knees digging into Donghyuck’s waist, so hard that Donghyuck can almost picture himself waking up tomorrow with yellowish bruises blooming on his tan skin like punches, but he doesn’t ask Mark to stop.

Mark bounces on Donghyuck’s lap with his mouth hanging open, black strands of sweaty hair falling over his eyes as he stares down at Donghyuck with wet eyelashes. He doesn’t complain when Donghyuck lifts his hands off of the tiles to roam fingers over Mark’s toned abdomen, slipping under the material of his shirt to draw angry red lines over pale skin with his nails. Mark curls into the touch as if asking Donghyuck to dig deeper, his spine arched back in a pretty curve as he keeps his balance by grabbing at Donghyuck’s shins with an iron-grip.

Donghyuck tries to meet Mark half-way. He chokes out a moan and tries to thrust up to match his rhythm, but Mark growls at him to _stay still_ with dark, dark eyes and spit gathering in the seams of his mouth.

It’s a maddening sight, Mark pulled into tense lines as he fucks himself merciless into Donghyuck’s dick, fast-paced and almost brutal, as if he _wants_ Donghyuck to break him inside. And all Donghyuck can do is grasp at his own sanity with bloody fingers and _take it_.

It gets even worse—even better—once it’s over.

Donghyuck doesn’t even have the time to get up and leave immediately like he usually does. Mark is all over him the second Donghyuck drags his pants up, still sprawled on the floor like an empty rag doll.

“Call me pretty again,” Mark whispers as he presses himself to Dongyuck’s body from shoulder to thigh, wearing only his stretched out t-shirt, boxer briefs, and his socks.

“Get off me,” Donghyuck says, pushing against Mark’s chest with his shoulder. “Gotta leave.”

“Donghyuck,” Mark repeats, more insistently, needy and gross and desperate. He pushes himself up on his elbow, dragging a hand over Dongyuck’s chest, placing it on his shoulder before he starts to trail light fingertips along his arm. Time is moving in slow motion one more time, and Mark is back to his natural soft self, looking dream-delicate and so fucked out. “Hyuck, c’mon. Tell me I’m pretty.”

Donghyuck doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t pull away either. He follows the slow movement of Mark’s hand with his eyes, his breath caught in his throat as Mark grabs Donghyuck’s hand to bring his red wrist to his lips.

“A pretty pain in the ass,” Donghyuck spits out, allowing Mark to press closed-mouthed kisses to his abused skin. “That’s what you are.”

And Mark smiles against Donghyuck’s wrist as if he’s won a price, wet cheekbones and wet eyes and wet lips. “Still pretty,” he beams, mouth moving over Donghyuck’s skin light as the breeze.

He’s such a pretty boy, Donghyuck wants to drink him up in a single gulp until the only thing that’s left of him is the faint shade of his body over the dirty white tiles, like a last breath.

Donghyuck doesn’t know when he falls asleep, but he wakes up with a cramped neck and a numb arm, drenched in sweat where Mark’s body is meeting his.

He gets up abruptly, disoriented and out-of-time, head spinning and stomach churning and legs wobbly as he stumbles to the door. He grips the knob like a lifeline when he turns around to look at Mark, still sleeping and half naked.

Jaemin is a liar, Donghyuck already knew that. He didn’t think Jaemin would lie to him about this, though. Because Mark looks everything but half-dead, at least tonight—or today, Donghyuck’s lost the track of time. Mark is curled up into himself, his pale skin still shaded red, cotton-pink against the white of the tiles. He looks round and calm and _alive_.

Donghyuck has never found himself going back to old corpses until Mark. He’s certainly never found himself wanting to _keep_ one. And he’s not about to start now.

He closes the door softly on his way out, and he promises to himself to never open it again.

**Don’t crawl for anybody.**

Donghyuck only lasts two weeks until his feet are dragging him to the upstairs bathroom of Jaemin’s house one more time, stumbling on each step with alcohol-heavy ankles.

It is not surprising that, when he opens the door, he comes face to face with Mark sitting on the floor, back against the bathtub as if he hasn’t moved since the last time Donghyuck walked out. He’s got pale knees drawn to his chest, his round eyes puffy-looking and bright-garnet as if they’ve been punched in the white skin of his face. Mark looks like an extension of the bathroom itself, marble-smooth and painted silver, merging into the tiles as he waits and waits and waits.

“Why’re you here?” Donghyuck asks, tripping forward after he closes the door with a blow of his elbow, a half-empty glass dangling loosely from his wet fingertips. Mark tilts his head to the side, blinking up at Donghyuck rapidly like he always does. “So drunk you can’t talk?” Donghyuck giggles, shuffling closer with graceless steps, his sneakers making squeaky noises when they lug over the titles.

Mark shrugs at him, lowering his knees slowly, stretching his legs open over the floor like an invitation for Donghyuck to step in between, and then closer. “I knew you’d come,” Mark confesses, squinting as if the sight of Donghyuck is harsher on his eyes than the violent-white light of the light bulb. He twists slender fingers on purple fabric, tugging at the ends of the basketball shorts he’s wearing, riding the nylon up his legs to reveal more pale skin. “You never last longer than two weeks.”

Maybe, if he wasn’t so drunk that everything seems barely real, Donghyuck would bite back with something cruel, or turn around to walk out the door at the obvious spider web lying unashamedly in front of him. But he’s got a dizzy head and more alcohol than blood running through his veins. He’s got ever-sweaty fingers that yearn for something sweet to sink their nails into, and sharp teeth that miss the acute pain of a toothache. So he stumbles closer and steps into the trap like a clueless fly, but at least he’s aware of the danger.

He’s giggling when he falls to his knees in front of Mark, his body bumping against the white ceramic with a dull noise, pain tickling up his thighs and scratching another laugh out of his throat. “You speak like you know me,” he snickers as he pushes his ass back on his heels, taking the half-empty glass to his mouth until it clanks against his teeth. “You know nothin’, pretty boy.”

Whatever it is in Donghyuck’s glass tastes bittersweet and sour. It drowns his laughter for a second when he takes a gulp, twisting the seams of his lips downward as he scrunches his eyes tightly.

“You’re still here,” he hears Mark’s voice say through the mix of alcohol and blood rushing through his ears, pulsating in his temples as if he’s about to overflow and splash golden and crimson all over the tiles. “Here and fucking wasted.”

Donghyuck keeps his eyes closed when Mark’s cold fingers come to cradle the sides of his neck, thumbs pushing into the skin, probably trying to press on purple bruises until they go white. He allows Mark to guide him forward blindly until their lips crash together, Donghyuck’s cheeks still puffed out with alcohol he hasn’t been able to swallow down.

It’s nasty, it always is, and Donghyuck hates that his body has _missed it_. He mewls when he pushes his tongue into Mark’s warm, welcoming mouth, liquid sliding down his chin as he licks inside of Mark to turn his never-ending sweetness into something bitter.

“‘m always wasted,” Donghyuck mumbles against Mark before he bites down into his pretty lips, tugging at the smooth skin sharply when Mark shakes his head no. “Always, always fuckin’ wasted.”

“Not like this,” Mark speaks with his hands interlocked behind Donghyuck’s neck to stop him from pulling away, diving back into the kiss, forcing his upper lip between Donghyuck’s teeth as if he wants him to bite off his skin. “Missed you,” he confesses as if he’s allowed to, because he’s never had the decency to hide, and Donghyuck knows he’s not about to start now.

So Donghyuck laughs again. Laughs through the stale taste of their mouths, through the stickiness of their skins, through the way his heart is swelling up in his chest and threatening to come out of his mouth.

“I should sew you here,” he chokes out before he pulls away from Mark’s mouth with one last bite. He tugs and tugs at Mark’s lower lip as much as he physically can, and then he sits back on his heels to watch it snap back to its place, chapped and rugged and on the verge of bleeding. “You’re always ‘ere anyway.”

Mark shrugs at him again, very much calm and familiar, not a hint of fear in his dark, dark eyes because he knows pretty well how this goes. He touches Donghyuck as if he has nothing to fear, trailing cold fingers down the bare skin of Donghyuck’s right arm until he’s curling his hand around the glass. Mark steals the drink out of Donghyuck’s grip with a gentle tug, and keeps staring at Donghyuck unblinking when he chugs down the remnants of the bittersweet liquor, his Adam’s apple bobbing underneath the smooth skin of his throat.

He’s smooth all over, Donghyuck notes, sneaking sticky fingertips under the legs of Mark’s basketball shorts. He squeezes the hard muscle of Mark’s thighs roughly, kneads the flat, velvety-soft flesh with eager hands as he drinks up the rest of Mark with blurred eyes.

There are no unfamiliar bruises on Mark’s neck. Donghyuck can’t see any foreign teeth bites, nor unknown nail scratches. He searches Mark’s throat with his gaze and all he can see are miles of milky skin almost pristine, like a new canvas. There are some old yellowish smudges here and there, but Donghyuck remembers them well, even through the intoxicated fog in his brain, because he was the one to scribble them there.

The thing is, Donghyuck has had people chasing after him before. He’s broken more hearts than he can count with the fingers of both hands, he overuses the word _no_ and is an expert when it comes to slamming doors. Yes, Donghyuck’s had people running after him, he’s had people begging for him, and he’s had people crying after him. But he’s never had someone _waiting_ for him. Not like this, not in a way that counts.

Donghyuck wants to keep Mark like this. He wants to pin him to the bathroom floor with his body and pierce needle and thread through the pads of his fingers, sew him to the tiles so he will stay waiting for Donghyuck forever. He wants to sew Mark to the bathroom floor just to unravel his stitches every night Donghyuck decides to show up, lick the wounds closed with his tongue afterward, just to do it all over again.

He shuffles between Mark’s stretched legs, digs his thumbs on the inside of Mark’s thighs as he sinks his knees harder into the tiles to push himself forward. He marvels at the way Mark’s mouth falls open when Donghyuck leans closer to his face, his eyes growing wider, waiting to be taken over. Always waiting.

“Would you still want me if I turned myself inside out?” Donghyuck asks out loud, finally.

The now empty glass makes a sharp noise against the tiles when it slips out of Mark’s fingers, causing Donghyuck to jump startled. He falls onto Mark one more time, giggling open-mouthed against his cheek. His nose keeps dragging along the sharp edge of Mark’s cheekbone fearlessly, because Donghyuck knows full well that Mark is way too soft to make him bleed unless he does something to deserve it.

“I always want you,” Mark replies after a few heartbeats, honest as Donghyuck knows him best, tentative hands coming up to map Donghyuck’s hips carefully.

Donghyuck growls under his breath, sliding back down again to tug Mark’s shorts and sweatpants off until they catch on the backs of his knees. He wonders distantly what his sober self will think of this once he wakes up, the devil getting on his knees for a good boy when he swore he'd never crawl for anybody.

But Mark’s always got the right answers even when Donghyuck himself doesn’t know what he wants to hear, and Donghyuck’s been wanting to drink him up until there’s nothing left from the moment he first saw that pretty face.

So Donghyuck nibbles and claws and pinches Mark’s thighs bloody crimson, and swallows him down until he forces himself to stop breathing.

He’s the one shoving Mark down his throat harshly, sucking hard and bobbing up and down frenetically, out of his mind. He’s the one digging impatient fingers into bone to make Mark’s hips stutter. He’s the one dragging his knuckles painfully across the tiles to sneak his hands underneath Mark’s ass, pushing him up and further inside of his mouth. Because Mark is entirely too nice to force himself into someone else hard enough to break them, even when he’s allowed Donghyuck to punch him on the inside more ways than one, more times they can keep count of.

When Mark comes, Donghyuck drinks it all up as if it’s just one more bottle to his tab, but somehow sweeter and more bitter than any brand of alcohol he’s ever tried. Knees and elbows and knuckles stinging as if they’ve been peeled open, Donghyuck sucks and swallows until Mark goes limp in his mouth, whimpering wet and loud as he squirms in Donghyuck’s grasp, his thighs quivering as if he’s lost control of his own body.

Donghyuck could come like this, with his nose digging into Mark’s lower belly, the smell of sweat and sex and Mark curling around his brain like a drug. He could come like this, still bent in half on the floor as if he’s praying, imagining Mark staining him on the inside as the cum he isn’t able to catch paints his abused lips white. But Mark runs shaky fingers through Donghyuck’s damp hair and curls his hand at the base of his nape, tugging him upward softly, slowly tracing the edge of Donghyuck’s jaw with his other hand.

“Hey,” Mark whispers, eyes welled up with tears when he meets Donghyuck’s heavy-lidded gaze. He isn’t sickly pale anymore, he’s the kind of pink you only see after you’ve been crying for hours, his cheeks raw and hollow when he smiles drunkenly. “C’mere,” he says, his fingers still grabbing at Donghyuck’s sticky nape to lead him closer.

Mark’s pants are still around his knees, thighs spit-wet and flushed, but Donghyuck climbs on his lap anyway. He grinds his clothed hard length against Mark’s oversensitive, softening dick until he’s got him shedding tears down his red cheeks, and Mark _lets him_ , touching Donghyuck’s body with open palms over his clothes, Donghyuck’s shirt so damp with sweat that it sticks to every line and cord, revealing more to Mark than he’s ever had before.

“What’s up with you today?” Mark asks between ragged breaths, his fingers flexing around Donghyuck’s hips at a particularly hard thrust. He’s tracing over the waistband of Donghyuck’s pants, touching lightly like a question Donghyuck can’t answer, doesn’t want to answer. “Did Jaemin tell you it’s my birthday or something?”

It’s a joke. At least, Mark giggles at the end as if it is. Donghyuck doesn’t care if it _isn’t_. All he cares about is the meaning underneath. It’s pitiful, the fact that Mark thinks Donghyuck would only ever touch him like this on a special occasion, the fact that he accepts it as if it’s something good. Pitiful, and powerful.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck moans as he places his right hand in the hollow of Mark’s left cheek. He’s got his fingers pulled in a hard fist, and his knuckles sting sharply when they touch the sweaty skin of Mark’s face. “Happy birthday, pretty boy.”

Then, Mark is spreading his fingers open all over Donghyuck’s lower back, still over his shirt ‘cause he’s nothing if he’s not thoughtful. He pushes Donghyuck closer to his own body, helping him rut against his tense abdomen in shallow thrusts, his chest swollen and eyes blown-wide as if he’s the one getting off.

And Donghyuck doesn’t need anything else to reach his climax, he’s always been dirty, and dry humping is good enough for him, getting high on the burn that comes with rubbing his skin raw until he stains his clothes. But Mark still gives him more.

He grabs Donghyuck’s wrist with his free hand to take his fist off of his face slowly, and Donghyuck goes breathless at the sight of four blood-red stains across Mark’s cheek.

Donghyuck’s eyes jump to his own hand, his chest swelling up when he registers the broken skin right where his fingers start, frail golden peeled open to make way to crimson wounds. It’s not bad, just small scratches from when he dragged his hands between the tiles and Mark’s body, but it still stings like fire when Mark runs his tongue over Donghyuck’s knuckles as if he’s trying to seal them with his spit.

It only takes Mark wrapping his lips around Donghyuck’s first knuckle to send him tumbling over the edge. He whines brokenly, twitching hot and sticky in his pants when Mark sucks into his skin. As he comes, Donghyuck imagines himself sneaking into Mark’s bloodstream, possessing him from the inside until they become the same person.

Donghyuck is only half-awake when he comes down from it. He can’t take his eyes away from Mark’s pretty mouth, his pink lips shining with spit and still wrapped around Donghyuck’s knuckles, sucking like he’s attempting to dry him out.

It is not enough, Donghyuck wants to get further, reach deeper, steal everything. He pushes his hand harder against Mark’s lips, trying to slip his index and middle finger into his mouth. Mark lets him, of course he does.

Mark opens up for Donghyuck immediately, staring at him with his eyes still glossed over with tears. His hand is still wrapped around Donghyuck’s wrist, cold and sweaty, but he’s not holding him back. He seems just as eager, curling his tongue around Donghyuck’s digits as he pushes in as if he’s trying to reach inside, trying to find himself there.

Donghyuck only stops when Mark gags, a few tears falling from the corners of his eyes as he blinks rapidly. When he takes his fingers out, they are spit-slick and beet-red, matching the color of Mark’s lips.

“Good night, Mark,” Donghyuck says, sounding dazed and half-gone even to his own ears.

He uses Mark’s shoulders to get up, smearing spit everywhere as he grabs onto him to push himself to his feet.

Mark lets him go, but he twists his mouth in a childish pout and mumbles, “Thought you would stay.”

Donghyuck is still pretty much drunk, sore all over and heavy-limbed, only half awake. He blames it on the alcohol when leans closer clumsily to pat Mark’s flushed cheek with wet fingers.

“Stop ruinin’ my fun, pretty boy,” Donghyuck tells him, pushing his pads into Mark’s cheek, but moving away as fast as his drunken mind allows him to when Mark reaches up to hold onto him. “Be careful.”

This time, Donghyuck doesn’t allow himself to look back until the door slams closed after him.

**Never let anyone inside.**

“Are we about to fight over a fuckin’ dude?” Donghyuck asks with a scoff, his arm pushed in the crook of Jaemin’s shoulder to lean closer, spitting angry words into his ear. “Again? Are you serious?”

“We’re not fucking fighting, Hyuck,” Jaemin shuffles on his feet as if the weight of Donghyuck’s body is too heavy for his legs and he’s about to crumble down, breaking the two of them in the process. “I’m just trying to-” he starts, but his words die in his mouth when he turns his head to look into Donghyuck’s squinted eyes.

“Tryin’ to what?” Donghyuck eggs him on. He hits Jaemin’s chest with the butt of his pink bottle of vodka when he doesn’t get a reply. “Tryin’ to fuckin’ what, Jaemin? Tryin’ to ruin my fun?”

If it was just one more summer night, Jaemin would dissolve into a fit of giggles under Donghyuck’s heat. He would take the bottle of vodka out of Donghyuck’s fingers and empty it in three fast gulps. He would press alcohol-wet lips to Donghyuck’s cheek, and then he’d drown him into the crowd until some pretty girl or some sad boy would offer themselves up to them.

But it’s been a while since these nights stopped feeling like normal, meaningless summer nights. Nowadays, Jaemin’s eyes always stay open and far too clear, his mouth dry and pressed into a thin line, no trace of the droopy lopsided smile Donghyuck knows so well, diamond teeth hidden under stern red lips.

“You’re an asshole,” Donghyuck says for what feels like the millionth time in the same night. He licks the mouth of his bottle, watching Jaemin’s serious face with half-lidded eyes. “You need a drink.”

At first, Jaemin doesn’t react when Donghyuck presses the sticky mouth of the bottle to the underside of his jaw. But, then, Donghyuck pushes in like a threat, and Jaemin curls his steady fingers around the glass to yank the bottle out of Donghyuck’s weak hand in a hard pull.

“The fuck are you doin’?” Donghyuck straightens his back, unsticking his body from Jaemin’s and watching with wide eyes as Jaemin turns the bottle upside down. “Dude, that’s fuckin’ expensive.”

Jaemin only shrugs, looking down at the pink liquor as it splashes all over the white kitchen floor. The alcohol sneaks into the creases between the tiles, running through the gaps slowly and stickily, and the mix of dirt and pink liquid dyes the cracks of the floor almost red.

“I’m trying to look out for you,” Jaemin finally replies, setting down the now empty bottle of vodka on his bar counter with a loud clinking sound.

Donghyuck huffs one more time. “As if I need it.”

He’s already walking out of the kitchen when Jaemin stops him with a fist on his lower back, tugging at Donghyuck’s shirt roughly to force him to look at him.

“You wanna be with Mark?” Jaemin asks, straight to the point sharp as a bullet. He says it as a rhetorical question, waiting for Donghyuck’s reply because that’s what he’s supposed to do, not because he needs the answer.

“‘m just tryin’ to get laid,” Donghyuck giggles, squirming closer to Jaemin to spell the words out slowly into his face. “‘nd you’re pissing me off.”

“You can say you want him,” Jaemin pushes. This is why they never talk when they aren’t drunk, ‘cause when sober people say stupid shit they can’t blame it on the alcohol, and a sober Jaemin is too stubborn and far too brave to let go of what matters. “You can admit it to me, Hyuck. It’s _me_.”

“It’s _you_ ,” Donghyuck repeats slowly smiling lazily as he pokes Jaemin’s soft cheek with a wet index finger. “And you’re pissin’ me off. I don’t want anybody.”

He keeps pushing until Jaemin’s eyes are turned away from him. Jaemin stays still, he doesn’t look at Donghyuck when he says, “Not everyone is out to get you.”

“It sure as fuck feels like you are.”

“I’m just saying,” Jaemin puts both of his hands on Donghyuck’s shoulders, squeezing until it hurts to catch his full attention. “He’s upstairs. You want him? Then do it properly or do it out of here.”

“You’re not my fuckin’ babysitter, Jaemin.” Donghyuck shoves him off with a hard push that has Jaemin stumbling backward until his back hits the edge of the bar counter. “No one gets to order me around.”

Donghyuck is already walking out of the kitchen when Jaemin yells after him, voice sober and clear over the music, “Out of my fucking house, Donghyuck!”

So up the stairs he goes, dragging the sole of his sneakers on each step as if announcing his arrival, the same way the Reaper would drag their scythe on their way to their victim. Donghyuck knows what he is and he’s not about to hide it. Jaemin bought him at face value, with all consequences, and Donghyuck doesn’t accept returns. If Jaemin can’t stomach the crime scene, Donghyuck will just take his business somewhere else.

“On your feet, pretty boy,” Donghyuck greets when he kicks the bathroom door open. He leans his shoulder on the door frame, watching Mark jump startled from his seat on the cold floor. Donghyuck keeps his arms crossed tightly over his chest ‘cause he refuses to be taking any more blows tonight. “Hurry up or I’m leaving without you.”

Mark doesn’t even ask where they are going, of course he doesn’t. He only nods fast and scrambles to his feet, moving sluggishly and clumsily. Donghyuck can almost hear the alcohol splashing inside of Mark’s body when they walk down the stairs, almost overflowing as he sways on his feet.

Donghyuck could push him against the wall, squeeze him to make him drip all over Jaemin’s pretty carpet, but he’s feeling a little tired tonight, roughed up and benevolent. Still, he grips the back of Mark’s neck with his nails as he leads him towards the door with a firm hand, hooking his fingers into the pale skin just enough to keep everyone else’s eyes off of him.

“Don’t forget your shoes, dumbfuck,” Donghyuck points out when Mark is about to step out on his washed out baby blue socks.

Mark wears white Converse shoes and he doesn’t even bother to tie his shoelaces. He slips his feet inside and squashes the back of the shoes with his heel, stepping outside with wobbly legs. He’s a walking menace, the plastic tip of his shoelaces clattering against the asphalt like a warning, the white cords threatening to sneak under the thin, thin sole of his feet.

It’s the total opposite of Donghyuck, with his big dark sneakers, soles four times thicker than Mark’s dirty shoes, because Donghyuck knows better.

“You’re gonna step on the tips of your shoelaces,” Donghyuck comments offhandedly as he lights up a cigarette. They make their way through the empty streets of Seoul, the sky as black as Mark’s hair. “You’re gonna fall on your face and break your skull against the asphalt.”

Donghyuck is leading the way, blowing smoke into the dark sky under the streetlights. Mark trails just one step behind him, clattering every half a second. And Donghyuck is still drunk, his mind conjuring pictures of grey streets tinted red to the beat of Mark’s steps.

“They are called aglets,” Mark says after a silence so long that Donghyuck had stopped waiting for an answer.

“What?”

“The tips of your shoelaces,” Mark adds, his words low and mellow, coming out of his mouth in slow motion ‘cause that’s the effect alcohol has on him. “They’re called aglets.”

Donghyuck takes a deep drag and throws his head back, spitting out smoke through a giggle. “You’re a fuckn’ weirdo,” he says, looking over his shoulder to find Mark already staring back. “Who the fuck knows that? Fuckin’ weirdo.”

“Yeah, a weirdo” Mark mumbles, reaching out to take Donghyuck’s cigarette out of his fingers with the softness of a skilled thief. That’s how he does everything, takes and takes and takes so slow and gentle that you don’t even see it coming. “But a pretty one,” he smiles with hollow cheeks, and Donghyuck wants to bite his cheekbones and eat him up like an apple.

Donghyuck wants to slice him up nice and thin, chew him down and replace all the parts he’s missing with Mark’s. After all, he’s the one who keeps robbing pieces of Donghyuck with ghost fingers, even if Donghyuck is usually too out of his mind to realize.

Jaemin doesn’t get it, Donghyuck thinks once they get to their apartment. He throws his cigarette to the ground and stubs it with his shoes, screwing his feet into the asphalt as he waits, watching Mark watching him. Donghyuck doesn’t want Mark, he only wants what comes along with him.

There’s a kind of violence only gentle hands can give you. Mark touches Donghyuck as if he’s touching something forbidden, running his cold pads over Donghyuck’s shoulders gently, testing the waters before he dares to drag nails down his shoulder blades. That’s what Donghyuck wants, the softness before the sting, the lick before the stab, the hesitation before the bullet. He likes sharp pain applied to all the right places because the one hurting him cares just enough to learn the best spots.

It’s all about the contrast. Donghyuck likes it rough, he likes fingers in his hair and knees digging into his ribs and teeth on his shoulders. But Mark gives him all of that and licks over his wounds right afterward. Mark throws punches with glossy eyes and melts when someone else kisses his knuckles.

He melts when Donghyuck pushes him against the closed door of his bedroom. Lights off and pale skin washed in the muted purple light coming from the streetlights, Mark flushes pink and whines hoarsely when Donghyuck pecks the edge of his jaw light as a feather, his knees buckling so fast that he almost crashes down.

“You like it so fuckin’ soft,” Donghyuck mumbles against the thin skin under Mark’s ear. He sneaks his fingers underneath Mark’s shirt, trails his pads over the jutted-out ribs, touching him the way you’d touch something made of porcelain. “Want you all over me,” and he drowns the shaky laughter that comes out of Mark’s mouth when he touches softly at his belly, because of course Mark Lee would be ticklish. Donghyuck wants him to crawl inside of him.

Mark moans at the action, throwing his arms around Donghyuck’s neck to shove their bodies against each other. He tries so hard for Donghyuck, pushing him backward roughly, gripping onto his back with sharp fingers at the same time he dissolves when Donghyuck kisses him closed-mouthed, thumbs painting slow circles on Mark’s hips.

Power gets you high faster than any drug, and there is nothing more powerful than a soft boy willing to harden his edges just to please you.

When Donghyuck pushes Mark off of him with a sharp shove, Mark stumbles backward with his hands held up in the air as if pledging innocence, eyes big and round as they jump over the dark room.

It is almost pitch-black but for the soft glow of the street lamps outside. Still, Mark stares at Donghyuck as if he can see in the dark when he pulls his shirt over his head.

“What are you doing?” Mark asks in a breathless whisper, taking a tentative step closer as if he’s ready to cover up Donghyuck’s body with his own to protect it. From who, that Donghyuck doesn’t know.

Donghyuck giggles as he undoes his pants next, sliding them down his legs along with his underwear until they are bundled up around his ankles. “Get naked, pretty boy.”

“Are you-” Mark starts, hands still frozen mid-air as if someone has paused him in real life. “Hyuck, what are you doing?”

But is too busy undressing himself to offer a reply. He sits down on the edge of his bed, leaning over to untie his shoelaces. He takes his shoes off carefully, ‘cause he’s already stepped all over the nastiest parts of himself each time he walked into Jaemin’s bathroom, anyway. And because Mark has already cut him deeper than the sole of his feet, though he didn’t even _try to_.

Donghyuck waits sitting on his cotton sheets, elbows resting on his naked thighs as he looks at Mark, still frozen in the middle of the bedroom like a marble statue. Donghyuck wouldn’t mind keeping him there, sew Mark’s toes on the carpet of his floor to keep him like a secret.

“Get naked, Mark,” he repeats, stretching his legs in front of him as he leans back on his elbows. “You can’t fuck me with your clothes on, pretty boy.”

As he undresses himself with sluggish movements, Mark keeps looking at Donghyuck as if he’s a mirage. Donghyuck _knows_ that he can’t see much in the darkness of the room, because all he himself can see are blurred purple lines and soft blue curves that suggest the dips and corners of Mark’s body, but don’t quite draw him. Still, Mark’s eyes feel blood-sticky and candy-sweet all over Donghyuck’s skin, piercing through the darkness like a needle would pierce through the skin.

Donghyuck isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol speaking, or the walls of his room, or just his eager body tired of the barriers between them, but Donghyuck is more than desperate to feel Mark skin to skin. He’d go further if he could, he would break his nails and shred off his skin like the snake he is. He’d stand in front of Mark naked down to his bones, just to feel him as close as possible, their blood running like one the moment Mark got at hand reach.

Because Mark has been growing inside of him for a while, now. He’s been eating Donghyuck alive since the second he tugged at his shoelaces, drunk out of his ass and on the verge of passing out on a dirty bathroom floor. But Donghyuck doesn’t think Mark would understand if he said out loud that he wants Mark to pin him to the bed and force his head into the pillows like he means it. Donghyuck doesn’t think Mark would understand if he told him that he wants him to tear his skin apart and cut his chest open just so he can kiss bone.

So Donghyuck waits naked instead, shredded off his clothes the way he can’t do with his skin, the closest he can get to baring himself alive, offering more than he’s offered anyone in a long, long time.

“D’you wanna crawl inside of me?” he asks once the last piece of Mark’s clothing falls to the floor. And Mark nods like an enchanted man, the same way he nodded the first time Donghyuck ever saw him, walking closer wide-eyed as if he can’t help it, his baby blue socks still on and crumpled around his ankles. “D’you wanna break me in half, Mark? Do you?”

Mark pushes Donghyuck down as soon as he reaches him, climbing on his lap as if he belongs there, draping his body all over Donghyuck’s as if he’s been eager to conquer him since the first night. He’s shuddering against Donghyuck’s chest, his hands shaking when he curls freezing cold fingers around Donghyuck’s wrists to pin them above his head, sinking into the mushiness of the mattress.

“You’re so,” Mark whispers, his lips dragging along the side of Donghyuck’s throat from where he is tucked in the crook of his neck. “So, so beautiful. Feel so good against me.”

When Donghyuck giggles, it causes Mark to shake even harder on top of him, his laughter rattling through Mark’s ribs as if they are one. And they haven’t even gotten started yet.

“You can’t even see me,” Donghyuck mumbles back, softly ‘cause that’s how Mark likes him, and he’s still feeling benevolent.

The hands around Donghyuck’s wrists tighten their grip, and Mark rubs his body over Donghyuck’s as if he’s trying to find the right position to click their rib cages together. “You feel-” Mark tries, his voice breaking in a whine when Donghyuck pushes his hips up, grinding against him in a slow circle. “Feel so beautiful.”

And Donghyuck is sure that Mark wouldn’t get it if he said he wants him to reach into Donghyuck’s body until his hands get dirty and bloodstained. He knows Mark wouldn’t understand if he asked him to push Donghyuck’s flesh around until he looks as pretty on the inside as he knows he does on the outside.

He needs to voice it in a way Mark understands. So, instead, he says, “I want you inside of me,” and Mark goes physically breathless, chest swollen, hard and heavy like a stone on top of Donghyuck. “Get inside me, pretty boy.”

And Mark does as he’s told, polite as always.

At first, it is slow and soft and tender, and everything Mark is made of.

Mark kisses Donghyuck’s lips with his eyes closed and a shy tongue, his fingers sliding off of Donghyuck’s wrists to press sweaty pads to the open palms of his hands instead. Mark’s heart thrums in his chest as if it’s trying to break free, beating against Donghyuck’s rib cage so fiercely that Donghyuck wonders if he’ll wake up with his skin punched purple by the sweetness of it all. He runs cold palms down Donghyuck’s body in feather-light caresses, but with his nails sticking out to scratch where it matters, marking Donghyuck’s sides angry-red just because he’s been allowed to. Mark slots their thighs together like puzzle pieces, maps out Donghyuck’s tummy and digs fingers into the soft flesh where his ribs end, threatening to cut in but never mean enough to go through with it.

He bites into Donghyuck’s neck the way he knows Donghyuck likes it, nibbling and nipping and sucking, turning the skin raw and tender, just to lick it smooth afterward, soothing the pain even though Donghyuck doesn’t need him to— because he can take it, and Mark knows it—but he does it anyway.

It’s all about the contrast, about how Mark touches him velvet and delicate like porcelain not because Donghyuck can break underneath him, but because Donghyuck has allowed him to. He keeps peeling off Donghyuck’s skin with careful hands, consuming each bit of his body just to kiss it back alive.

There is only so much of it Donghyuck can handle, though. He’s so drunk and overwhelmed that the room is going round, the darkness around them mushy-looking as if they are about to get swallowed into it. Everything is shining with an unnatural light through the blur of Donghyuck’s teary eyes, and he might be able to bare his body in the dark, but he’s not about to allow his feelings to lay in bed with them.

“Mark, I want you to ruin me,” he commands, looking down at where Mark is getting lost on Donghyuck’s hips, nibbling at the hard bone as if he’s trying to suck it jelly-soft. “D’you wanna break me in half? Wanna get back at me?” he asks with a hoarse voice, running his fingers through Mark’s black hair when he finally looks up, red-cheeked and glassy-eyed. “C’mon, y’know how I like it.”

But revenge is not the best way to brive Mark into leaving niceties aside, because naive pretty boys are way too kind to hold grudges. If Donghyuck asked out loud, he’s sure Mark would say he doesn’t have any grudges to hold ‘cause, every time Donghyuck bent him in half, Mark wanted it twice as much.

Mark unsticks himself from Donghyuck with slow movements, still clumsy and awkward amongst the blackness of the room and the alcohol. Donghyuck should’ve known, Mark’s pale skin has never looked like it belonged to the dark.

“Where do you keep the lube?” Mark asks, whispering as if to prevent the calmness in the room from shattering.

It is not calm inside of Donghyuck, though, head spinning like a Ferris wheel, shooting fireworks beneath his eyes but not lighting up all the wrong things.

“You don’t need it,” Donghyuck says, disentangling his fingers from the sheets to grasp Mark’s shoulders in a futile attempt at getting him to stay. “Y’know I like it rough.”

Mark moves away anyway, Donghyuck’s fingers sliding over his sweaty naked skin, closing into nothing as if trying to grab a handful of water. “And you know I can be rough and careful.”

It’s then when Donghyuck starts to miss the white, cold tiles of Jaemin’s bathroom floor, somehow more familiar and way more comfortable than the mushy surface of the bed he sleeps in every night. He blames it on the quiet, no muffled music outside of his closed door to mute the sounds of Mark rummaging through the bedside table, like an announcement of what Donghyuck is about to give away. He blames it on the cold too, late summer night with humid air sneaking through the open window and turning Donghyuck’s skin sticky-warm, and he’s still cold.

He starts to tug at the bedsheets, trying to tug them from underneath his body to wrap them around himself like a second skin. Suddenly, the need to shred off all his layers but his bones is turning against him like a death penalty, dangling above his head and threatening to smash him into small porcelain pieces he sadly knows too well. And Donghyuck hates hiding, loves to pretend by walking around with his head held high, swallowing down the fact that he’s not brave enough to strip under a lit up light bulb the way you would swallow glass, crazy and bleeding.

But Mark is back all over him the second Donghyuck starts to squirm. Mark is back all over him with the pads of his fingers soft like cotton as he pushes Donghyuck’s knees to his chest, pressing as if to sink his ribs into his lungs. Mark is back all over him and he takes the time to giveDonghyuck something he’s never considered to give Mark before and that’s somehow worse than gentleness.

Mark slicks his slender fingers viscous and cold, and gives Donghyuck patience. He works him open nice and slow, biting painfully into his thighs and around his knees to distract him from the fact that he’s about to be taken over.

And all Donghyuck can do is squirm in pleasure and beg, “Mark, c’mon,” muffled against the crook of his elbow. “You can do better.”

Mark breathes out gentleness, lives proud of his cotton-candy hands. He wears his heart on his sleeve for anyone to look at, but Donghyuck is the only one allowed to wrap his hands around it and squeeze until Mark is forced to go iron-hard.

“So fuckin’ soft,” Donghyuck breathes out, his arm thrown over his eyes so Mark can’t see the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes as he presses the right buttons. “Should’ve brought someone else home.”

Growling like he’s out of his mind, Mark slides his fingers off of Donghyuck to turn him around harshly, the heels of his hands pushing at the softest curves of Donghyuck’s body as if he’s trying to mold him into something new. He grabs Donghyuck’s bare hips with steel fingers, and pulls him up just to throw him back against the bed face-down, until all Donghyuck can breathe in is the detergent-smell of his pillow.

“Yeah, just like that,” Donghyuck speaks around the cotton fabric, his tongue slipping out of his mouth and wetting the cloth when Mark presses his nape into the pillow with a firm hand. “D’you wanna hurt me?” he asks, turning his face so his right cheek is squeezed to the pillow, Mark’s thumb pushed into the flesh underneath his jaw to keep him pinned down. “I deserve it. C’mon, pretty boy. Do it.”

Mark transforms into something he’s not right behind Donghyuck’s back. He picks up Donghyuck’s shredded skin from the foot of the bed, dresses himself up in his reaper costume, and pushes inside of Donghyuck forcefully, as if he’s trying to break him on the inside to adjust to Mark’s body, carving him perfect-sized so no one else will ever be able to fit in. Donghyuck lets him, moaning open-mouthed, staining his pillow with tears and spit, because getting teared up from the inside hurts in all the right ways. It’s not as if Donghyuck will ever let anyone else in, anyway.

Donghyuck squirms into the squeaky mattress, his breathing getting more and more ragged with each punch of Mark’s body against his. His body keeps sliding up and down the sheets as if he weighs nothing, feather light for the force that is Mark. He feels rubbed raw everywhere, his wet, sensitive skin getting scratched by the blankets, what used to be soft cotton suddenly turned sandpaper-rough.

He tries to sneak his desperate hands underneath his own body, eager to wrap shaky fingers around himself and jack off while Mark keeps thrusting into him, so fast and hard that Donghyuck is sure his entire body is turning blood-red. Mark catches his arms before Donghyuck’s hands get to their destination, though, and he pulls him up and back against his chest in one sharp tug.

It’s not a bad way to die, Donghyuck thinks, stripped down and almost bent in half. Mark keeps tugging him backward, arching Donghyuck’s back in an impossible curve, his ribs so jutted-out that they threaten to pierce through the skin. And Donghyuck swears he’s never had it better than this, peeled open from his knees to his lungs, his head thrown back against Mark’s shoulder, Mark’s mouth attached to the crook of his neck as if he’s trying to drink him dry at the same time he pushes and pushes to fill him up.

Donghyuck comes like this, sore and breathless and untouched, dirtying his already dirty sheets and his always dirty body.

And Mark stops right when Donghyuck comes down from his high, ‘cause he’s as nice as he’s become fierce. He allows Donghyuck to fall face-down back into his mattress, body sticking to his stained sheets, and then Mark takes off his condom and comes all over Donghyuck’s ass, spluttering white over the stinging skin.

Once it’s over, once silence takes over again, Donghyuck holds his breath and waits for the weight of Mark’s body to fall on top of him as the final stab. But it never comes.

What does come, though, are fever-hot fingers on Donghyuck’s lower back. Mark slides his hands down Donghyuck’s abused skin, painting gentle shapes over the slapped-red flesh of his ass, and stays deafeningly quiet.

“Gave it so good that you went speechless, pretty boy?” Donghyuck giggles, high on sex and the remnants of hard alcohol in his veins.

Mark doesn’t reply with words, but there are wet lips leaving fleeting pecks at the end of Donghyuck’s spine. Donghyuck screws his eyes closed and wills himself not to shake, counts the kisses up until six, and then the mattress starts to creak as Mark gets up.

“The hell are you goin’?” Donghyuck huffs out, turning around in bed, his dirty sheets entangling with his sweaty body. “You aren’t up for round two? Should’ve seen it coming, fuckin’ softie.”

At first, Mark doesn’t say anything. Donghyuck watches him silently as he picks up his clothes from the floor, putting them on slowly like one would patch their wounds. Mark only looks at him once he’s got his feet tucked inside of his white Converse shoes, his laces undone and winding over Donghyuck’s bedroom floor.

“Can’t stay,” Mark says, voice low, but sounding like a scream in the quiet of the room. “I’m leaving Seoul tomorrow.”

Donghyuck stays frozen, his still numb brain scrambling in his head, trying to make sense of the words. He stares and stares and stares at Mark, waiting for Mark to give up and look away, to blush embarrassedly, to cry desperately. Anything but the way he’s staring back at Donghyuck with dark eyes that look almost sober, dimmed down, shining half-dead.

“Okay,” Donghyuck replies, tugging at the sheets to pull them further up his body, his toes dipping into the uncomfortable mushiness of the mattress. “Close the door when you leave.”

Mark is still looking at Donghyuck, takes his words in unblinking. Donghyuck tugs the sheets further up, until every part of his body is blocked from Mark’s sight but his eyes. He counts his shallow breaths like seconds, a countdown to his last one, where he will bury himself alive the second Mark walks out.

“That’s all you’re gonna say to me?” Mark asks, taking a step closer to the bed.

He steps on his undone laces, he trips forward and almost falls face-first on Donghyuck’s floor. He catches himself on the edge of Donghyuck bed, though, and Donghyuck is left wondering if Mark would’ve splattered cristal all over the carpet, wondering if he is frail enough to break into a million tiny pieces the way Donghyuck did a long, long time ago. The way he’s trying not to do now, arms tight around his own body like glue.

“What d’you want me to say?” Donghyuck snaps, words muffled under his blanket. “Be careful, it’s late?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mark keeps moving closer, only stops once his knees bump against the edge of Donghyuck’s mattress. He has the guts to reach out, curling his fingers into the sheets slowly, tugging them down so softly. “You know that’s not what I-”

“Let go,” Donghyuck pulls at the blankets hard, ripping them off of Mark’s grasp in a single pull. “You expect me to tell you not to go? Expect me to beg you to stay like a fuckin’ loser?” He giggles, loud and jarringly high and cruel, because that’s just what he is. “You don’t know me at all, Mark Lee.”

Mark’s eyes fall to the floor with a slow blink, and then his mouth curls up into a smile that looks gentle, almost sad, but Donghyuck knows better.

“You know what? I wouldn’t stay even if you asked me to,” Mark says, patting the edge of the mattress before turning around. “I know you enough. I don’t expect anything from you.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Donghyuck yells at his back, a desperate attempt to get Mark looking back at him at least once more.

“It was fun, Hyuck,” Mark says when he gets to the door, his back still turned to Donghyuck. And he has the guts to sound _honest_. “Maybe we can repeat next summer, if you’re down.”

And then he walks out the door, stomping his Converse shoes as if he’s trying to make a point, his aglets clattering against the floor of Donghyuck’s apartment with each step he takes.

Mark leaves, and he takes his pride and his marks, and steals Donghyuck’s in the process. He leaves and he takes everything with him, but the burden. Mark leaves, and he takes everything but the nasty parts, the sweat and the cum and blood, the heartache and the open wounds.

And Donghyuck says, “dream about me, Mark,” but there’s nothing but an empty room to hear him.

**Stay away from pretty faces.**

Lee Donghyuck promised seven things to himself a long time ago: don't make the first move, don't fuck someone twice, never keep a _see you later,_ don't stay the night, don't crawl for anybody, never let anyone inside, stay away from pretty faces.

"That shit keeps gettin’ longer, man. You’re ridiculous, ” Jaemin tells him every time they talk about it. “There are faces that could break every single one of your sick little rules, though," a droopy lopsided smile on his pretty mouth 'cause they are back to safe grounds, never seeing each other sober enough to grin straight.

And Donghyuck is many things, but naive is not one of them. He knows Jaemin is right, but he won’t fall on the same trap more than once.

“That’s Xiaojun, by the way,” Jaemin points out, pressed to Donghyuck from shoulder to knee as they watch the crowd dancing in Jaemin’s living room. “I fucked him once. What a night.”

Donghyuck takes the bottle of vodka to his mouth, keeps his lips wrapped around it when Xiaojun looks at him from across the room, sharp eyes running up and down Donghyuck’s body unashamedly. Donghyuck gulps down liquid, winks, and waits.

“Not a friend?” he asks, head pushed in the crook of Jaemin’s shoulder so he can hear him over the music.

Jaemin shakes against him with a giggle. “Just a good fuck.”

Xiaojun has a sharp jawline, a sharp mouth, and sharp eyebrows. He walks closer to Donghyuck with decisive steps, smiling like he knows what he wants, like he knows what he’s in for. He’s handsome, gorgeous even, and he’s aware of it. He’s not pretty, at least not the kind of pretty you’d wage war for.

So Donghyuck drags him to the bathroom and slams him against the closed door. He kicks Xiaojun’s legs open and grabs him by the neck, slamming his cheek against the wood when Xiaojun tries to lean back for a kiss.

“Don’t fuckin’ touch me,” Donghyuck growls into the warm skin of Xiaojun’s neck, his nails sinking into the skin until it breaks. “And I’m on top, baby.”

Xiaojun laughs, pressing his hands flat to the door and pulling his head to the side, baring more skin for Donghyuck to ravish.

“I like it rough too, tough guy.”

Xiaojun says it like he means it. And he acts the way he speaks. 

And Donghyuck can take it.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for taking the time to read, comments and kudos are very much appreciated!! see you on my next story (hopefully) ❤
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/tiniemarks) // [cc](https://curiouscat.me/tiniesung)


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